My daughter is sort of mixed state or rapid cycling. She is rarely "happy" manic - altho' it does happen 1-2x month. I always describe her as sort of "manically depressed". She has no frustration tolerance or impulse control. She really struggles with a single obsession - right now it is clown fish, last month it was Angry Birds, etc. The thoughts just won't leave her alone and if she can't satisfy that obsession she just falls apart. She had a MAJOR problem with stealing this year b/c one of her obsessions lined up with stuff kids were bringing to school, so she would just take it. She isn't violent toward anyone but herself. She has had problems with self-harm in the past. She has threatened suicide a few times and threatened to run away. It is like she just can't get ahold of herself. She has always been pretty solitary (unless happy-manic, then she is just clingy) and her method of coping is to go into her room, lie on her bed and rock back and forth (violently) to music. It works well for her, but now that she is older she "looks" crazy when she has to rock herself to calm. She doesn't do well with lots of stimulus. She is currently on Abilify and Lexapro. Abilify w/o the Lexapro lead to hours and hours of brutal sobbing. Sobbing in the grocery store, sobbing in the car, etc. Lexapro w/o the Abilify seems to make her completely unable to keep her temper - she just falls apart at everything. Two months ago, she fell apart and spent 36 hours in a frustrated, angry state. Mostly verbal abuse directed toward me, but she did threaten suicide and I found out later had written "murder" all over a paper in her room. Scared me to death. I knew I probably needed to take her somewhere, but I just didn't know where. The place her psych told us to go has a separate "psych ER" but it is in a horrible part of the state with lots of violence, etc. I could take her to NYC or Philly but I can't quite see a 2 hour car drive when she is miserable. BTW, did you want the Discovery F&H "Bipolar Mysteries" show? |
