One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder is a lack of insight – an inability (not unwillingness) to notice a significant shift in one’s own mood or behavior. This happens most often during acute mood episodes – manic or depressed – but can be part of the bigger picture of living with the illness. Family members agonize over how to help someone who doesn’t want help, and they sometimes watch helplessly as the illness destroys their loved one’s life.
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the title of this article invoked in me some hope.
the content of this article didn’t.
it’s all the same “advice.”
hope has become a cruel 4-letter word to me, my siblings, my parents, and the kids of my sister, who is held hostage my her mind
a treatable illness becomes a game of Russian roulette
one bullet in the chamber of an irractic swinging gun aimed at all of the above (children & adults) friends or strangers
the bill of rights apparently says you and i have to be okay with this.
and it’s NOT enough for a legalized medical intervention
meanwhile my sister has life, but not A life.
by not treating the illness, she reinforces the stigma of bipolar
and as family, i’m legally bound to what?
sit back and enjoy the show?
ARGH.
Lynn
10:45 am on
June 2nd, 2010Once again, an article that skirts around the issue of what to do when a bipolar is out of control and ruining our lives. Come on, I have seen a manic go out of control for 8 months, ruining our finances, losing his business. The court system wouldn’t even help after he fired his psychiatrist. I am still reeling from the devastation a year later. A divorce, after 20 years, financial nightmare he left me with, taking care of our children. Wake up! We need to change this system that allows the mentally ill out of control person to be in charge. I am giving up. No longer will I be caught up in a system that can do NOTHING to help me. I tried to obtain Guardianship. What a joke. It just cost me time and money.
I agree totally with lisbeth and Lynn. The last time my loved one suffered a severe manic episode, she called the cops who took her to the ER. The doctor in charge forced a hospitalization.
Had this “fortunate” series of events not taken place, what was I to do? Watch my loved one suffer? Twiddle my thumbs until bipolar ripped our family apart?
Are we supposed to wait until the person who is unable to make a rational decision finally decides to get the help he or she needs or gets so bad that she’s a physical threat to herself or others?
I realize that we need some balance. Nobody should be able to force a hospitalization willy-nilly, but I feel it’s highly irresponsible and even cruel not to force treatment when treatment is necessary.
Anon
11:37 pm on
June 2nd, 2010And what about when treatment doesn’t work or makes them worse? Do you advocate still forcing them to have it? It isn’t always lack of insight that causes people to leave treatment. Many times it’s because the treatment sucks. Ever been a patient in a psych ward? I can’t say the ambience is particularly therapeutic. Have you ever taken psych meds that make you gain 50 pounds? Perhaps the focus should be on improving the treatment, then you might have more people willing to participate.
sue
12:14 am on
June 3rd, 2010Have to agree here, I have several people with bipolar in my life. They will tell me after a manic episode that they wish *someone* could have stopped them. Latest episode with friend is that the hospital released her even after she hit an orderly. Her pdoc did not do anything and neither did her therapist. Therapist told her later that she should have let her know she was that bad off. But her friends did call the therapist and the nature of the illness is that my friend would not have been able to tell her therapist. Our mental health system is cruel. In the name of allowing patients to make their own health care decisions and protect their privacy, it ends up hurting those whose illness does not allow them to make decisions that they would truly want if they were well. I have seen this too many times. What is described in the article above has never happened to anyone I know, no matter how much we might have tried to help them. I am an educated, articulate, experienced woman. I shudder to think how others with fewer resources and experience manage.
Anon
8:07 pm on
June 3rd, 2010Joe write, “I realize that we need some balance. Nobody should be able to force a hospitalization willy-nilly, but I feel it’s highly irresponsible and even cruel not to force treatment when treatment is necessary.”
The problem with this is who gets to define “necessary?” My former pdoc told me >8 years ago that I would have to take meds for the rest of my life. He told me my only hope was ECT and I was hospitalized multiple times under his care. I didn’t get better until I got off all the crap they had me on and away from the psychiatrist.
Under the pdoc’s care I went from depressed but employed to depressed, crazy, unemployed, and hospitalized multiple times. Of course, the psychiatrist blamed this on my worsening mental illness rather than his treatment. Once I was successfully weaned off all the psych meds against medical advice, by the way, I went back to school and obtained a graduate degree and have been employed full time ever since with nary a hospitalization. It sure would have been a bad idea if the psychiatrist had been able to force me to have all this “necessary” treatment.
I know more than a couple of people who are only bipolar because they were loaded up on antidepressants. Their bipolar disorder is iatrogenic. Forcing more treatment is like adding fuel to the fire. How are you going to protect them if you make it easier to force treatment on people? I guarantee you the court would have listened to my psychiatrist over me, even though he was the one creating most of the problems. The more people advocate for making it easier to force treatment, the more I’m glad I got out when I did.
It is clear how much frustration and anger and sadness there is around this issue – on every side. Balancing the need for patient’s rights versus the ability to get someone help who can’t see the need for help because of the illness is a central tension in the world of mental illness. I had a few additional thoughts after reading the comments.
It is a real mess when someone doesn’t want help. I missed the obvious intervention of calling the police when the situation is dangerous – and that potentially leads to forced hospitalization. But if the person isn’t dangerous, the police will be of no help if the person is unwilling. Unless the patient/person is flagrantly dangerous or out of control, if they refuse to go to hospital the police won’t intervene. A crisis team can come to the home to do an evaluation – and consider committing the person if they are dangerous. But not every community has access to a crisis team.
You can’t go to a judge to commit someone – since the 1960′s and the patients’ rights movement commitment requires one or more physicians to evaluate and determine imminent dangerousness. Then the courts become involved for more long term involuntary care. But people can’t just go to the courts and request commitment – at least not most places. Those kinds of commitments were abused historically.
So we come back to the central problem – if someone is imminently/actively at risk of harming themselves or others or totally out of control or disorganized with psychosis – then there is a clear path. Doctor or crisis team or police or ambulance send/take people directly to ER and hospitalize the person against their will. So families can engage any of those systems when the person is dangerous. But anything short of dangerousness is the limbo territory that causes devastation. Plenty of bipolar symptoms cause lots of damage – but you can’t coerce treatment for someone short of the dangerousness criteria.
That’s when interventions like community services or support groups can be helpful, but they are often low yield. The fact is that there will be times when you can’t do anything except try to engage your loved one in care – and ultimately take care of yourself if the illness is so malignant that the person cannot get better – cannot accept help. And, as hard as it is, working to minimize anger and resentment in the process helps everyone – because the illness is the enemy – not the person.
Sometimes there is nothing we can do for a while – the illness is so bad, so damaging, that bad things happen no matter what. And living with that notion regarding psychiatric illness is a huge challenge because we just keep thinking that if the person just tried a little harder they could make this better – but they can’t.
If things are dangerous we can coerce. Short of that, we do the best we can — try to support and engage, take care of ourselves, try to limit the anger – but things may still go terribly wrong, and sometimes there isn’t anything we can do about that. We try to keep trying – but if it is harming us we have to disengage.
This illness causes a lot of destruction and like most other serious medical illnesses, sometimes in spite of everyone’s best efforts, we fall short and we can’t prevent bad outcomes. That is the sorrow and grief of any chronic illness. The system we have is far from perfect but it does offer some balance between the patient’s rights to choice and their right to get care even when they can’t see that they need care. Advocacy and involvement will be a big part of the evolution of the system – but there are no simple answers on either side.
Anon
10:02 pm on
June 4th, 2010I was reading Dr. Fink’s comments and I concede she knows more than I do about what can legally be done, however what I’ve experienced is not entirely in line with what’s been said. I had a situation where my therapist called the police because I cancelled an appointment. He was wanting me to come more and more often, which I did not want to do nor could I afford to do. The therapist called 911 saying he was worried about my safety.
The police and the therapist showed up at my apartment. The police asked the therapist what he wanted to happen. They didn’t ask me. I clearly said I did not go to the hospital. Keep in mind I was not threatening suicide nor threatening to harm anyone. I was depressed, but all it takes is a mental health professional’s opinion that you’re dangerous for things to start happening that the patient doesn’t want to happen. The therapist said I needed to go to the hospital, and the police said if they took me they would have to handcuff me and take me to the police station first. I was in tears and pleading with them not to do that to me. I have never, ever been in any kind of legal trouble and am a law abiding citizen. The therapist took me to the hospital. I did not want to go and said so, but I went because they gave me the choice of the therapist taking me or going by police car.
The ER doc (not sure if he was a psychiatrist or not) looked to the therapist for the therapist’s opinion, and I was told that either I could sign in voluntarily or they would sign me in. Was this a voluntary admission? The papers say so. Coercion and threat invalidate the informed consent process. It’s not informed consent if someone is threatened or coerced into signing an informed consent document. This coercion/threat to sign in as a “voluntary” patient has occurred more than once in my case, and have never officially been an involuntary patient. I know I’m not the only one that this has happened to. Would they have had the legal authority to sign me in against my will, I don’t know and from what Dr. Fink is saying perhaps not, but I certainly believed them.
Another thing that happens is that they’ll accept that a patient is competent enough to sign an informed consent document but the moment the patient does, then everything changes. Suddenly, when the patient requests to leave they’re no longer competent. Strange, isn’t it. Even though I had signed in as a “voluntary” patient, and I use the term voluntary quite loosely, when I requested to leave a nurse told me, “You’re not going anywhere.” It took threatening an attorney (I gave them the name of a friend of mine who is an attorney) for them to let me out. Voluntary? That’s certainly debatable.
If someone has said they don’t want to be admitted, then an informed consent document should not be accepted as valid. And, if a patient is assumed to be competent enough to sign in, then they should be considered competent enough to change their minds and sign out. Can’t have it both ways.
I understand the comments of concerned friends and family. I’ve grown up with a family member with paranoid schizophrenia. It’s no picnic. I get it. But, I don’t think the answer is to make it easier to commit someone against their will. It’s already being abused as it is.
Jon Myers
3:02 pm on
June 9th, 2010Has anyone expressed seeing bright colors during a mania episode. Yellows and reds seem over bearing to watch? Also, on the same espisode amazingly I was taken back by the roof lines of some high rise buildings in my downtown area. Everything seemed to look like a unique piece of art that I had to close my eyes just to get some relief. Also, for some reason I have started the play Christmas Music in my car. I feel ok but do these signs mean anything. Also my short term memory is just shot. Thanks
Liz
8:46 pm on
June 11th, 2010I am so beside myself tonight. I am not sure, but I think my brother is bipolar. I know that he was diagnosed this at about the age of 18, he took Depakote or some mood stabalizer I think, and stopped it quickly. He is nearly 50 years old now and has never had any treatment.
I come from an old new england family, my grandparents were well off and very old time culture from Maine. When my grandmother died, my brother was named as executor of the estate. I tried to help but was argued with to no avail and finally I decided that the only way that I would have peace would be to take a deep breath, acknowledge my deep deep disappointment and turn away. Since that time nothing has been done on his part and all has been lost in terms of my and my sisters inheritance, nearly half a million dollars. Now my sister and her husband are struggling with the recession and ther is a chance for her to claim a bit of money which may help her to keep her house, and my brother is being so mean. He thinks we owe him everything. This is so horrible. For me I have made peace, enough of his silly acts, I walked away and truthfully feel very peaceful about this decision. But my sister is hurting so, she doesnt understand why my brother doesnt know that she loves him, how could he be so mean to her.
How oh how do you get someone to get treatment, he will never go on his own. My heart just breaks for all of us around him. It is very painful to watch and be a part of.
Anon
9:38 pm on
June 14th, 2010I keep reading how it’s so important that we get people with bipolar disorder into treatment, yet when I look at the number of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder who are receiving disability today that tells me the treatments must not be all that effective for many people. Why don’t family who advocate for forced treatment ever want to address the problems that can result from forced treatment – like side effects, ineffectiveness of treatment, or when treatment is making things worse?
Try thinking about this from the patient’s perspective and then you might have a better understanding of why people don’t want treatment. It’s not always lack of insight as people like to believe. Many times its the side effects that cause people to stop treatment (and there are some really fun side effects like gaining a ton of weight, tremors that may or may not be permanent, sexual dysfunction, the list goes on)and while using coercive or forced measures to gain compliance may work in the short term it destroys trust which leads many people to stop treatment altogether. We’re not children who need to be managed.
I suppose the reason I support my family member’s decision not to continue treatment is because I know what it feels like to be in her shoes dealing with the side effects and with treatment making things worse. I can’t blame her for her decision and as long as she is not causing harm to someone else, then I fully support her right to determine what she does and doesn’t want to risk. It’s her life, not mine.
I hope that the laws are not changed to make it easier to commit people. Lack of insight is defined as disagreeing with the psychiatrist or family members. We cannot make this the criteria for commiting someone to the hospital or we are in for a world of trouble. If the laws are changed then god help anyone with this diagnosis during a custody dispute, divorce proceedings, executing a will, etc, because they’re going to be screwed. Scary territory.
Julie
9:31 am on
July 7th, 2010Yes, Anon, as a matter of fact, I have been in a psyc ward, and have taken medications that caused me to gain 50+ pounds. Hm, gain weight or destroy my life and everyone else’s around me, maybe even die? tough choice, eh? Side effects may be nasty, but what you do is try another medication, and another, until you find the one that works for you and that you can tolerate. For this you need a good psychiatrist, of course. But as far as intervention, I’m all for it, as long as their are very clear safeguards to prevent the abuses you seem to be so afraid of. It beats sitting by and watching a person destroy themselves, and you, and your entire family with their untreated disease. Glad I got intervention – wish we could do it for our out-of-control son who is about to lose everything, even the kids, due to his walking away from treatment.
dandelion
6:52 pm on
July 7th, 2010the title of this article invoked in me some hope.
the content of this article didn’t.
it’s all the same “advice.”
I agree with Lisbeth. It’s all the same advice, over and over and it’s not really helping when you’re living with someone who has bipolar.
You can’t always wait for things to get completely out of hand, if you’re trying to have a “normal” life with somebody. There needs to be intervention before something happens.
We, as loved-ones, are expected to show compassion and understanding for the illness and accept that it’s not the person’s fault.
I understand that, but who has compassion and understanding for the loved-ones of a mentally ill person who have to live with the symptoms day in and day out?
I am disillusioned with the healthcare system and with the support you get in these kinds of situations.
Even after hospitalization, as soon as the person walks out the front door, you’re back on your own.
Anon
8:12 pm on
July 8th, 2010Julie, that’s fine that you’re okay with taking medication that causes you to gain 50 pounds, but I’m not okay with it. See, that’s where we’re different. What’s worth it to you, isn’t worth it to me.
If you’re okay with forced treatment, then you can sign paperwork today to be sure you are forced into treatment in the future, but I don’t find that kind of treatment to be remotely helpful. I don’t care who takes medication that’s their own business. What I care about are those, like myself, who don’t want to accept the risks and side effects. That’s our business and unless someone is violating a law then our decision to not take medication should be respected.
John
8:16 pm on
July 21st, 2010Our son has issues and we just thought he was a bad kid. Then we sent him to a therapeutic school and we started to understand the root problem. It should have taken a therapeutic school like West Ridge Academy but we were at a loss.
anon
11:41 am on
August 13th, 2010Steps I have taken to stage a bipolar intervention
A. Judge how their episode is affecting themselves and others
a) safety issues
- are they in danger of hurting themselves or others?
b) reputation issues
- are they at risk of engaging in more embarrassing behaviour that amounts to social and employment suicide?
B. Judge how far removed from reality they are
a) are their perceptions skewed to the point of bordering on the fictional?
b) are they talking about having auditory or visual hallucinations?
c) how much are they acting on what they perceive?
d) are they open to your feedback?
C. Judge whether they are coming back or not
sometimes they will come back but sometimes they don’t, are their symptoms getting worse i.e. further removal from reality and acting out?
D. Before taking actual action
a) are they still taking medication? If it is not regular and continuous, it is no different from not taking medication. Or is it caused by the medication?
b) have phone numbers of your support group ready
These should include your friends for support, mental health help lines, their psychiatrist’s contacts
c) give them the option to seek treatment themselves or to seek treatment for them
d) if they are ok with it, great, accompany them to the hospital and keep visiting them until they become stabilized and are released
e) if they are not ok with taking treatment and they are not taking their medication properly, this means they are not able to take responsibility for themselves and have abdicated from their power to do so.
f) make an appointment to see their psychiatrist (if they go with you all the better, if they don’t, go yourself) and give a clear description and details of their situation. ask the psychiatrist to write a letter for the police so they will understand what the matter is.
g) look out for something they do or say that would amount to endangering themselves or harm OR that amounts to unawareness of the reckless or dangerous potential of their actions
h) call the police or ambulance. using the information in d) justify that they need to be hospitalised
E) things to note
they will hate you for it and may abuse you for it afterwards but they will come back to earth.
you can’t make any of those judgements properly if you are not living with them
It’s tricky to work out whether they are under the influence of their condition or whether they have more growing to do. Regardless of this, if they have reached a point of unreality, it’s pretty clear they can’t come back by themselves and the situation will only get worse.
Anon
11:08 pm on
August 15th, 2010I think where I take issue with the previous comment and some of the others is that you fail to see us as individuals. We’re not diseases. We’re individuals with different thoughts, different families, and different lives. So, when comments are made like “they will hate you for it… but they will come back to earth,” I just shake my head. What you’re saying may be true for you or your family member but it is far from being the universal truth. Comments like some of those above also assume that treatment is the answer, and if people just take their meds then they will be fine. That may be true for some people, but it’s not true for others.
Comments like some of the ones above, fail to take into account several things, such as family members are sometimes a big part of the problem to begin with, or that medications can make patients worse, or that forced treatment can traumatize people leading to more mental problems. If my family were making comments such as some I’ve read here, I would move to another state and I certainly wouldn’t turn to them when I needed them.
If someone is threatening to kill or harm someone else, then I would support forced intervention. I would also support it for those who sign an advance directive saying that’s what they want to happen. But, those are about the only instances where I would support using force. Most people with mental illness are not violent, and this point needs to be remembered.
anon
12:14 pm on
August 22nd, 2010I don’t think any intervention should be done unless
1) they are harming themselves
2) they are suicidal
3) they are removed from reality: talking about hearing voices that tell them to do things, they talk about being able to connect to famous people telepathically, passing through time, obsessive and repetitive talking to themselves to the extent they are not able to sleep or take care of their own hygiene, they are tormented by the voices they are hearing and acting on the alternative reality they live in to the extent that their behaviour affects other people
Do note that this condition has a wide spectrum of variety and not all those having this condition require intervention
(further to note posted 20100813)
TYPO:
h) call the police or ambulance. using the information in g) justify that they need to be hospitalised
Anon
9:09 pm on
August 25th, 2010Here’s why I disagree with the criteria for forced intervention listed in the previous post. Based on that criteria, then my former psychiatrist (and half of America) should have been held against her will. She was harming herself. She was morbidly obese and had bad health habits. Every time I saw her she had a regular coke in her hand. She died from heart disease in her early sixties. Forced intervention could have saved her. She could have been locked up and forced to eat a healthy diet and exercise and probably would have lived much longer. Yet, no one rushed in to “save” her. Why not? Certainly one could argue that she lacked insight and was self destructive.
So, I disagree. I think people do have the right to self destruct and make decisions that maybe you or I wouldn’t make, even people with bipolar disorder (and psychiatrists). I think the problem arises in that some people assume that if only patients with mental illness were “well” then they would understand that they would want to risk the effects of haldol or zyprexa or lithium or ECT or whatever. Wrong. No one can say what that patient would want except that patient (or the patient’s legal guardian, and even they don’t get it right sometimes). I would not take those drugs, although I certainly support those who want to take them. It’s an individual decision.
We have to respect peoples’ rights. In my opinion, if someone is sane enough to sign a consent form, then they’re also sane enough to say “no” to treatment. (Incidentally, I met two out of the three criteria in the post above because of being overmedicated. It’s a good thing I retained the legal right to say no more).
I am not anti-meds or antipsychiatry. I am anti-forced treatment with only a couple of exceptions (e.g. harm to others or those with an advance directive). Being given a diagnosis should not mean that a person’s thoughts, opinions, and wishes suddenly become irrelevant and/or invalid.
Sandy
12:26 pm on
December 30th, 2010I am new to the family support role of a loved one being crippled by a devastating illness. I have been a healthcare provider for nearly 20 years and have witnessed all aspects of both physical and behavioral health illnesses, but once you step into the emotional role of a family caregiver everything changes. My entire life has been turned upside down and put on hold. I fear that my loved one will never be stable again and that I will be required to sit by and watch. I know more than the average person out there when it comes to the medical interventions needed to manage the disorder and I also understand the legal aspects that hamper many of us trying to support those we love. I agree that when the mind is warped…how can you possibly ask the warped mind to make a clear decision regarding their own healthcare decisions. It is scary to watch the system try to manage the unmanageable and even worse ask the unmanageable and confused, delusional and psychotic person to decide the who, what , when, where and how they will manage their future needs. Lets face it…99% of a successful recovery depends on the support network and without one an individual is doomed for failure, re-hospitalization and god forbid death… I have seen it happen one to many times in my 20 years of healthcare experience. The legislatures and so called advocates for the mentally ill need to wake up and do exactly what they charter as their mission…provide support and advocacy for those inflicted with a mental illness… Our loved ones need us and we need help to help them- where is that help!!!! Laws need to be changed and people who are ill and incapable of making good sound decisions need the help of those who love and care for them… The time has come for change and I for one will not give up until those changes are made….
Em
3:31 am on
March 24th, 2011My family & I are at our wit’s end. My aunty has multiple disorders including severe bipolar. She is chronically obese, attracts men who are either as mentally ill as she is or use her & abuse her to take whatever possessions or money she owns until it all runs out, she of course is high as a kite because she is getting attention & doesn’t listen to anything we say & the authorities won’t do anything because she is entitled to her rights. Over the last 25 years we have had to watch time after time as she freely gives away everything she owns during her manic episodes or because she is being coerced, while we are the ones left to deal with the broken heart, suicide attempts, severe debt & homelessness when the money & the guys dry up only to have it all happen again.
Dave
9:32 pm on
January 22nd, 2012Stuggling with how to get my bi polar mom into the psychologists office. The agony of watching her gradually alienate everyone she has ever known with delusional paranoid phone calls from out of the blue is breaking our hearts. She’s on disability, and when that check comes, she gets manicures and her hair styled instead of buying food or saving it for when she is thrown out of her house that is being foreclosed on.
Her paranoid delusions causes her to lash out at anyone who has ever treated her in a manner she finds unfair, and unfair basically means not entertaining her delusions as she verbally insults you. Two days ago I had to plug in every electrical cord in her house back in after she unplugged them, claiming that metal near the outlets would short circuit everything. she also called the gas and electric company complaining of perceived problems with service, but she’s visually impaired, so half the time she can’t tell, and the other half it’s a paranoid response to some thing like a burned out light bulb.
If patient rights meanwe have to stand buy and watch a loved one destroy themselves, then damn patient rights to hell. If a person is drowning, you don’t ask them if they want help or wait until they go completely under before helping, you pluck them out of the freaking water.
Dawn
9:14 am on
January 25th, 2012I have just read this entire strand, and I feel more hopeless than ever. I guess my whole life being turned upside-down by my bipolar daughter every 6-8 mos, our retirement being drained by rehab expenses, our marriage being under constant strain..the horrific life-threatening scenarios that play out each time she goes into the depressive state will never end, and there is no way my life will ever NOT be “on hold’ because I am now afraid to start anything new, she undermines it every time she gets depressed.
If I start a business, it goes belly up, because as you know, when you start a business, you often use your own money, and you are not free to walk away every 6-8 mos to deal with “episodes” that happen because they lie on purpose (and tell you that) to the evaluating psychiatrists. That coupled with a very uncooperative bipolar ex (her father) who feels psychiatry is a joke, and undermines any postitive work that is done.
Just shoot me now, they have drained the life out of me. My poor current husband has been so awesome, and poured all of his finances trying to help her get well…we are now over $50,000 in debt, and he is taking a high paying job working contracting in Afghanistan to try to pay it off.
This is all at the expense of our now 15 yr old who has Aspergers. I am sure HE would love to spend the time with his own daughter, rather than working oversees..and rarely seeing her…but with all our retirement money gone, we can’t keep our heads above water…
My older daughter is now 26, she is a gorgeous beautiful, smart talented girl, but has come back home in crisis about 7-8 times, it is linked with alcohol usage as well, she has no idea what she does when she blacks out drunk, but she has been in hospitals, beat up other people, been raped..etc.
Last night she sits down and tells me SHE doesn’t have an alcohol problem, and she doesn’t do thinks that hurt other people. I give up. I don’t know what else to do. I came to this page hoping to find some answers, but I found that all of you are dealing with the same issues, HELPLESSNESS.
Where are the success stories? I sure could use a few. I have been in therapy for years myself to just survive all this bipolar, aspergers, and my own ADD. My husband should get a medal of honor for just being the kind of man he is, but God have mercy on him…I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want to stay..what a mess….I won’t go into the other problems caused by my bipolar ex, with our son…who has PTSD and on his 3rd deployment in Afghanistan. wow..I would run away to a desert island and disappear if not for my beautiful amazing 15 yr old. who needs a stable mom.. I am not faking it very well any more.
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