Tag: bipolar disorder treatment

How I Manage My Bipolar Mania

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By Clisver Alvarez, as told to Stephanie Watson

Having bipolar disorder hasn’t been easy. I’ve lived with it for 11 years now. Being diagnosed at age 16 was heartbreaking for me. I didn’t know what was going on, and I remember feeling like I was dying. Mostly what I remember is being in and out of hospitals, and the countless nights my parents lay awake, praying that I’d return to my normal self.

The first time it happened, I thought I was having an asthma attack. I had shortness of breath. I couldn’t sleep. My mom had to work — she worked in a factory. So she told me, “Just get some rest, I have to work tomorrow.” She ended up falling asleep. I walked to the hospital alone in the middle of the night.

When I got there I told them I was having an asthma attack, because I do have asthma. They gave me the steroid drug prednisone. The nurse gave me three pills. I remember asking her, “Do I take all three pills?” She didn’t say anything, so I ended up taking all of them.

I didn’t know that psychosis is a side effect of steroids. I don’t remember how I got home that night. It’s like I blacked out.

Something’s Up

It got to the point where my mom was like, “There’s something wrong.” When I looked up my symptoms on the internet, I felt like there had to be something else going on. I wasn’t sleeping. I started getting irritable. I thought, this can’t be asthma.

Eventually, she took me to a psychiatrist, who confirmed that I had bipolar disorder. My mom said, “We have to put her on medication.” There were no ifs, ands, or buts.

Panic Mode

My psychiatrist put me on medicine to treat my bipolar disorder, but I was young and didn’t accept my diagnosis. Lithium helped, but it was very strong — so strong that I was sleeping through class, to the point where my grades went down a lot. I didn’t comply with my treatment, which often landed me in the hospital.

I had one episode where my boyfriend dropped me off at the bus stop to go to my friend’s house. I told the bus driver, “Next stop.” When the bus driver asked me, “This stop or that stop?” for some reason, that sounded off to me.

I got off the bus and was crossing the street when I heard a sound like a car suddenly stopping — the screeching tires. I had an out-of-body experience. I felt like the car had hit me. It’s like I saw myself getting hit. In my mind, I was in panic mode.

As I walked down the street, I felt like people were staring at me. I was very paranoid.

I called my boyfriend and told him, “Take me to the hospital. I don’t feel good. I don’t know what’s happening.”

Motherhood

When my firstborn son came into the picture, that’s when the sense of responsibility set in. I took an oath that I would take my medications as prescribed for my son’s well-being. It was not just about me anymore. Now I had a purpose. Things started to look up.

Yet once I got married, all the pressures of being a working mom and wife started getting to me. I wanted to be everything to everybody. I took on too much, to the point where it became destructive. I stopped taking care of myself. I wasn’t sleeping, sometimes for days.

I would skip my medication on some days, and I relapsed. It got to the point where I became a very aggressive person, even psychotic. I spent a month in the hospital. I also got court-ordered therapy.

In 2018, when I was pregnant with my second child, I had to go off my medication again. My husband’s painting business was slow at the time and we were struggling financially. I decided to get a job, and I was under a lot of stress.

I ended up in the hospital because I was feeling very anxious. I took my son with me because I didn’t want to leave him alone at home. The hospital staff saw right away that I wasn’t in the right condition to care for my son. The Department of Child Services had to step in. They took my child away for 2 days. My husband had to fight to get him back.

Knowing When to Ask for Help

Late in my second pregnancy, my doctor adjusted my medication dose. I’ve been on my current medication for a couple of years. I’m in a good place now. My kids are healthy. My husband and I are planning to buy a home. I feel like I’m learning to live a balanced life, prioritizing what’s important and enjoying my family.

The medication is working, but my doctors are on speed dial, and I’ve set up a plan with them and with my family. I have a team now. Because I’ve been through this so many times, I’ve prepared myself, but you can never be too prepared. It’s always good to have backup support. I’m learning how to recognize when I need help.

Having those 11 years of hospital stays, psychiatric appointments, and therapy have done a lot for me. I’ve finally accepted and embraced my bipolar disorder.

I’m very thankful for the people who have helped me through this — my mom, my husband, my therapist Elizabeth Sellari, and all the people who have pushed me and given me courage. Honestly, without them, I would not be in this position.

Inspiring Others

I became a life coach because I wanted to help other people overcome their struggles and live to their best potential, just like I turned my life around. I basically help them put their life into perspective and try to show them what is possible. I help them change their mindset, so they think like the person they want to be.

I want other people to see that if I did this with bipolar disorder, they can too. A lot of people with mental health issues suppress themselves or think that they can’t do it. I want them to say, “I am worthy.”

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November 3, 2022
How My Bipolar Disorder Treatment Has Helped Me

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By Katherine Ponte, as told to Stephanie Watson

I had a normal, happy childhood. I was always ambitious, although somewhat insecure. My parents immigrated from Portugal to Toronto, Canada. Neither of them finished high school. I was very eager to please them by being the first person in my family to go to university. So I always felt pressure to perform well.

I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree in politics and my law degree. After working in Brazil for a few years, I moved to the United States and started the MBA program at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Not only was I insecure that I wasn’t performing at the same level as my classmates, but I was also alone for the first time in my life. My parents were in Canada and my future husband was working in New York.

The academic and career stress, coupled with the loneliness, led me to withdraw and isolate myself. In 2000, I was diagnosed with major depression. I thought it was just a phase that would pass. I went to a psychiatrist and tried medication, but after a couple of weeks without improvement, I stopped taking it.

At around the same time, my father lost his job where he’d worked for 30 years. I was sexually assaulted by a classmate. All of these stressors came together, and I started to act erratically and out of character. I sent a long, rambling email to my classmates — all 800 of them.

My vice dean at Wharton said, “Something’s not right. We have to take you to the counseling office.” Within 5 minutes, they had diagnosed me with bipolar disorder.

Denial

I refused to accept my diagnosis. I felt that I was sick because of everything I was experiencing.

I tried new medication, but I didn’t like the idea of taking it. To me, it was an admission that there was something wrong with me, and I was having a really hard time accepting that I had bipolar disorder.

I managed to graduate from Wharton, but I fell into a deep depression soon afterward and became completely unmotivated. Even when I moved to New York and reunited with my future husband, it was a very difficult time. Sometimes I felt so depressed that I couldn’t get out of bed.

Crisis

For 6 years, I went untreated. Then in 2006, I had a major crisis. I thought the world was coming to an end and I was the messenger who was going to save it. When my husband came home one day, the apartment was a disaster. I had torn it apart. My mania and psychosis had become so severe that he had to call 911.

Three police officers and two paramedics arrived at my apartment. It felt more like a criminal arrest than a medical emergency. They strapped me into a wheelchair and took me away in an ambulance to the hospital.

I landed in the psychiatric emergency room. The doctor who admitted me opened the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) up to bipolar disorder. He asked me, “Are you experiencing any of these symptoms?” and pointed to the page. I said, “No, no, no.” But he said, “Yes, yes, yes.”

For 2 days, I lay on a gurney in the psychiatric emergency room hallway because the hospital didn’t have any open rooms. They heavily sedated me to bring me down from my severe manic episode. I woke up in leather restraints in a lockdown unit. It was disturbing.

Before I was discharged, I had to arrange to meet with a psychiatrist for treatment. Within weeks of starting my medication, I felt that I was cured and no longer needed it. So I came off the medicine, got sick, and was hospitalized again. I was hospitalized three times — in 2006, 2010, and 2014. A separate manic episode led to my arrest for breaking into a house of worship to pray, because I again thought the world was ending.

A New Direction

The turning point for me came during my last hospitalization in 2014, when I watched a video of a woman who was living with schizophrenia. I couldn’t believe that she was actually living a full life. She was running her own company. She seemed 100% stable. She seemed happy.

I started to believe that I could be happy, too.

I got involved with peer support, meeting and speaking to other people with mental illness. It really helped. In fact, it was critical to my recovery. They understand what it’s like to live with mental illness. This gave me hope, which motivated me to act.

I had to find the right medication and the right psychiatrist. I’d been with two psychiatrists for 5 years each, and it felt like they were just keeping me alive. They were trying to address my symptoms and protect me from being hospitalized, but my condition wasn’t improving.

I was on a medication regimen that was making me sleep 14 hours a day and had caused me to gain 60 pounds. My condition was getting worse. I had to find a new doctor.

A bipolar disorder clinic I’d contacted in California referred me to a local psychopharmacologist — a doctor who specializes in using medicine to treat mental disorders. I felt like, either I’m going to try this or I’m going to continue to be unhappy.

When I met with the doctor, I told him, “I want to go off this medication that’s causing me to sleep. I don’t want to be obese anymore. I want to be able to work and do something with my life, not live this sedated life that I’m living.”

My doctor gave me medication options and then asked for my preference. It was a completely different treatment approach than I’d ever experienced, called shared decision making. I was shocked that he was actually asking me what medicine I preferred. That to me was a sign that he respected my opinion.

My new doctor didn’t just treat me to address symptoms and side effects and avoid risks. He treated me to achieve my life goals.

He took me off the medicine that was making me sleep for 14 hours a day and making it nearly impossible to lose weight. Then he put me on six medications, including mood stabilizers for my mania and depression. Within 2 days, I was down to 10 hours of sleep a day. Within 6 months, I had lost 50 pounds.

I don’t like taking medication, but once I saw that the medications allowed me to live a fuller and more meaningful life, I accepted being on them. I’ve been stable since 2016.

My spouse has also played a tremendously important role in my recovery. Families can play a critical role in the recovery of their loved ones.

My mother recently sent my doctor a card. In it she wrote, “Thank you for giving us our Kathy back.” He said it made him teary-eyed.

Paying It Forward

When you’re in the psych unit, there are no get-well wishes or flowers. There’s very little hope that you’re going to get well. Once I started to get better, my mother began to send me cards once a week, and they really made me feel better. I wanted to do the same for other people.

I started this program where twice a month, I visit the psychiatric units at two hospitals in New York. I get people to donate greeting cards to me, which I distribute to patients. Patients also decorate and leave their own messages on cards for other patients. During these visits, I talk to the patients and share my lived experience. That makes them perk up. They say, “Oh, you’re one of us. You understand where we’re at and how we’re feeling.”

I also created an online peer support community for people living with mental illness, substance abuse, and stressful life events, called ForLikeMinds. We have over 10,000 members. It’s a place for people to meet and share their experiences. Peer support was really important to me during my recovery.

In addition, I recently created a coaching service called Peersights. I help people and families living with mental illness pursue recovery. The objective is to inspire hope, help them find the resources they need to get better, and improve communication among themselves and with doctors so they can better advocate for their own needs.

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November 3, 2022
How I Manage My Bipolar Depression

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By Rwenshaun Miller, as told to Stephanie Watson

As a black man, I’m only allowed to show two different emotions — anger and happiness. Anything else, and I’m considered weak. Seeming weak in this culture can easily get you killed. We definitely don’t talk about mental health. There’s a stigma associated with that.

I grew up in Bertie County, a rural community in northeastern North Carolina. When we’d see certain people around the neighborhood who were homeless or who were always on the corner by one of the stores, we’d write them off by saying, “Don’t bother him and he won’t bother you.” That was the extent of the conversations we would have about mental health.

It was only after my bipolar disorder diagnosis that I had a conversation with my grandmother, and she ran down every symptom that I had going on. I asked her, how did she know? And she said, ’cause she’s been dealing with it all of her life. She just never talked about it or got any help. That was a conversation that only came up after my family had dragged me to the hospital.

Downward Spiral

I graduated from high school near the top of my class and ended up going to UNC Chapel Hill on an academic scholarship. I walked onto the football team and the track team.

But after my freshman year, I got really close to being kicked out of school. My grades were terrible. Just adapting to college was one thing, but adapting to a college where I wasn’t very well-represented as a black person was even harder. I had to find my own sense of community.

I came from a small town where I was a top athlete and a top scholar, to this large school where I was at the bottom of the barrel when it came to athletics and I wasn’t doing well at school. I was in an identity crisis. Then in my sophomore year, I suffered a knee injury, and that essentially took away my athletic career. Things started to spiral.

It started with me withdrawing from my friends. I didn’t want to talk to them. Whenever they would call, I didn’t answer the phone. When they came to my room, I wouldn’t open the door. I didn’t watch TV. I would just sit in my bed. Some days it was hard to get up. Other days if I did get up, I would sit in a chair and stare at the wall for hours on end.

This was in 2006. I was 19 years old. At the time, I wouldn’t have called it depression, just because I didn’t know what the word depression meant. I would have just said I was sad or in a funk.

I didn’t go to class. I didn’t eat. Over a matter of about 6 weeks, I lost about 25 pounds. I wouldn’t shower or do any type of grooming. My hair was all over the place. I went through a period where I didn’t sleep for like 2 weeks. Because I wasn’t sleeping, I started to hear voices.

Intervention

My mom would constantly call me and ask, “How you been doing?” I would lie and say, “I’m good and school is going well.” At this point I hadn’t left my room in maybe 2 months. She said, “I can hear it in your voice that something’s wrong.”

She got off the phone and called my cousin, who went to North Carolina Central University. When my cousin came to my dorm room and saw me, she started crying. I wasn’t the Shaun she was used to seeing.

About 2½ hours later, the rest of my family showed up — my mom, my dad, my aunts and uncles. When they laid eyes on me, they got worried because I had lost a lot of weight. I’m pretty sure I smelled because I wasn’t taking showers. I just looked bad.

When they asked me what was wrong, I wouldn’t tell them what was going on. I’m trying to act in front of them like everything was OK. But they’re looking at me like, you can’t lie to us while we’re sitting right here looking at you.

They said, “If you don’t want to talk, we’re going to take you somewhere to get you some help.” They told me they were going to take me to the hospital. I went kicking and screaming. I fought them the entire way there.

Distrust

They took me to the Duke University Medical Center psychiatric ward. When I got there, I ended up punching the nurse. I wasn’t trying to hurt her, I just didn’t want to go to the hospital. I was scared to go in there, because when you hear about someone going into an institution like that, they’re considered crazy. Nobody wants to be considered crazy.

Once I punched the nurse, I had to be restrained because they considered me a threat. They put me on sedatives to try to calm me down. They asked me a bunch of questions as far as what had been going on with me. That was one of the hardest things to do. I was restrained in a padded room, and they were asking me all these questions. I looked through the glass at my family, and they were crying because they’d never seen me in this state.

Then on top of that, nobody in the hospital looked like me. To be a black male in a mental health hospital, I wasn’t trusting anybody in there. I was scared to talk about what was going on in my head because I didn’t know what they were going to do with the information.

When I received my diagnosis of bipolar I disorder with psychotic features, in my head I was like, I don’t believe you. I don’t care. I’m just going to say OK so I can get out of here.

They told me that once I got out, I didn’t need to go back to school because it was one of my triggers. It was a high-stress environment. I needed to go on a treatment plan, which included medication and therapy.

Game Changer

Once I got out of the hospital, I didn’t want to go back home. Being from a very small town, you don’t come back because you failed. I considered it a failure that I had to leave school, and I was embarrassed at having had to go to the hospital and receive this label of bipolar disorder.

Lucky for me, my uncle lived in Charlotte. So I moved there. No one knew me in Charlotte.

Once I was there, I got connected to Dr. Kendell Jasper, a psychologist. He was a game changer for me, because he was a black male. He was down to earth. When I first went to his office, he had on a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and Jordans. I wasn’t used to seeing doctors like that. It was comforting, but also I was a little leery, like, are you sure you’re not lying to me that you’re a doctor?

But once we started to engage in talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, he was able to provide me with so much help. He also referred me to a psychiatrist. Sometimes he would go to my psychiatrist appointments with me so they could work on my meds and figure out what was working, what would help me sleep, and what would calm down the voices in my head.

Self-Medicating

Once I got better, I stopped taking my meds and going to therapy because I thought I was cured. I went back to UNC Chapel Hill in the fall of 2007. But once I got back into the groove of school, my symptoms came back.

Instead of going back to therapy, I self-medicated with alcohol. I was drinking a fifth of tequila every other day. I did that for 3 years. I became a functional alcoholic.

I was still going to work. I was still going to class. I was still doing everything I needed to do, but the entire time I was in emotional pain. People would consider that part of my life a success, but they didn’t know the struggle I was going through on a daily basis.

I felt like I needed alcohol to get through my day. I would wake up drinking and I would drink throughout the day until I went to sleep. I thought it was helping, but it really wasn’t. It was making things worse.

During this time period, I made three different suicide attempts. In the first two attempts, I tried to overdose on pills. The last time, I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger, and it jammed on me. That was my lowest point.

Treatment, Part Two

After the last suicide attempt, I had to understand what had helped me get better the first time. It wasn’t the alcohol. I had to get back into treatment.

I was very intentional about therapy this time. I started to incorporate different techniques into my daily lifestyle that helped me, like meditation, yoga, and journaling. I started making sure that I ate healthier, making sure I got the sleep I needed, and that I made enough time for myself.

The second treatment process was about learning who I was, and learning what things were my triggers and what things were my protective factors. And once I got into that groove and understood that, I started accepting my diagnosis for what it was. I had to take responsibility and own my bipolar disorder, and also understand what I needed to do to be healthy. That’s when things started to change for me.

From Patient to Therapist

Once I got healthier, I started noticing that some of my family and friends were struggling too, whether they were diagnosed or undiagnosed. Most of them were undiagnosed, because they weren’t going to get help. That’s what led me to become a therapist, get my master’s degree in mental health counseling, and also pursue my PhD in international psychology.

A lot of the clients that I work with are men of color. I can’t expect them to come in and be completely vulnerable with me in a traditional therapeutic setting. I can’t come at them with a textbook solution. The textbook wasn’t written by us, or even for us. I have to meet them where they are and make them comfortable.

I incorporate physical activity, whether it’s going to the gym and shooting basketballs, or going to the local trail and walking the trail. Especially when I’m working with young boys, playing games is how I build trust with them.

Building Awareness

I also started a nonprofit organization, Eustress. [Eustress is “good” stress — the kind that challenges you and helps you grow.] I do a lot of work within the black and brown communities to raise awareness, and give them the tools to be able to address their own mental health issues.

I do three mental health awareness walks a year — one in my hometown of Bertie County, one in Chapel Hill, and one in Charlotte. At the walks, we have a yoga class. We have other mental health resources. We do fitness boot camps. We understand that mental health is health.

I also do adult coloring nights across the country. We raise awareness and also introduce coloring as a therapeutic tool. It’s something people can do at home on a daily basis.

Every Wednesday night, I do a conference call called Locker Room Talk, where men across the country call in and we talk about anything and everything for about an hour. We talk about the different things that affect our mental health, so we have space to open up.

Last year, I started the Young Black Male Eustress Initiative. I go into a local middle school and do therapy with seven seventh-graders, young men. I also do therapy with their teachers and everyone in their household. The point is to reduce their inability to get to treatment, because I go to them, and their inability to pay for treatment, because I do it for free.

It also changes the entire ecosystem of how they view mental health. I allow the parents a chance to address their own issues, and after they address their issues, I teach them how to work with their child. That way, we can really start to impact change and break these vicious cycles that we’re dealing with in the black community, whether it be trauma, depression, alcoholism, or sexual abuse.

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November 3, 2022