comments:
How are they going to know what it is? You have depression that's all. They use easily half our meds for depression even wo BP in the family. They won't diagnose it for a long time anyway probably, most won't until 18, but they will medicate. What med did your dad abuse? It's super hard to abuse our meds, none of them are fun. If he was abusing anxiety meds (those can be highly addictive) that's bc his BP wasn't treated well enough, we run a 50% substance use disorder rate untreated, it drops down to regular population rate when the BP is treated, often without effort. I thought addiction ran in my family. Nope, just untreated BP, they got on meds it all stopped. Usually family is useless for the reasons you've run into - it's normal! We're fine! Shut up! It's child abuse to deny you needed medical care, can you get to your GP, explain the situation, they'll have ways to get you help. They are making it way more likely you'll end up like your dad by denying you treatment. And way more likely you'll become an addict, bc that's what they're driving you to do, self medicate. They're not really afraid bc of your dad, they just don't want treatment themselves and are inflicting that on you. There's a podcast called This Is Bipolar! by two deeply soothing Canadian moms w BP2, you can see it on YouTube as well. If anyone in your family is reachable (your mom say) maybe that's worth them listening to. In the meantime can you get to a therapist? Clearly they would see the extreme need for that given the circumstances. At least one of those moms will be in the CrestBD AMA in March if your family wants to ask them any questions, along with about 50 other BP researchers, docs and peers. podcast this is bipolar by two moms with BP2, they'll be in the AMA almost certainly in March https://www.thisisbipolar.com/ Last year's AMA https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jf1c42/we_are_71_bipolar_disorder_experts_and_scientists/ book Bipolar not so much a good read on soft BP, cyclo, MDD, BP2. https://www.amazon.com/Bipolar-Not-Much-Understanding-Depression/dp/B09KHM4H86/ podcast inside Bipolar very helpful re the med hunt for you. how to handle your doc etc. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-bipolar/id1613398128 crestbd has a great extremely kind and compassionate video by a psychiatric genetic counselor your mom might like. https://youtu.be/iJPtqXIjtBc the first ten mins or so are really important, it'll help her understand what's going on If she's worried about careers, here's a bipolar neuroscientist https://youtu.be/7NQAT2MCBvk And the surgeon general of California https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-08-26/california-surgeon-general-bipolar-disorder-mental-health Classes for your mom https://www.nami.org/programs/nami-family-to-family/ Support groups for your mom (other parents to talk sense into her) https://www.nami.org/support-groups/nami-family-support-group/ Support groups for you online (both they and NAMI have in person), some might be by age group, you can go to any one you want, they're every day. https://www.dbsalliance.org/support/chapters-and-support-groups/online-support-groups/ list of 64 bipolar meds, not complete https://www.drugs.com/condition/bipolar-disorder.html