So I’ve posted on here before, I’m the guy with a wife on the other side of the world but used to live with her in the US. She accused me of cheating on her 3 times during a psychotic episode, claimed she wanted to end the relationship and then cut contact with me.
So far she’s been to the psychiatrist twice, with blood tests in between and she was told she has vitamin deficiencies. She will also be sent for MRI scans which should hopefully help us in getting a diagnosis
I found this out from her sister and her sister also told me that she went to a psychologist and the psychologist can’t give a diagnosis but said there’s a 70% chance it’s bipolar disorder that she has. I thought it was schizophrenia but since then I’ve been researching it more and more, I’ve been on tiktok and came across a video which described dysphoric mania, which made a lot of sense. I still don’t know what is going on with her but it would make sense as the “breakups” during dysphoric mania, they often end relationships and will say things like they never loved you/always loved someone else. Her ending the relationship was mostly based on her delusion that I cheated on her 3 times.
She still isn’t properly medicated, so I won’t try to talk to her now as she’ll probably shoot me down.
She has however been acting different on social media. One of the first things she did was change her profile picture and she looked like she was in a child like state. Then after some weeks she changed her name back and put herself as single. She made it the first thing you see when you arrive on her page. She’s also been changing her profile picture every other week which to me shows attention seeking.
However the last week or two she changed it so it doesn’t show her as publicly single. She changed her profile picture again to another picture of herself. However she’s started uploading pictures that she took when in Pittsburgh. On her Instagram she put her profile picture as one of the bridges but it was taken behind a chain link fence. Then yesterday she changed her background photo to a photo that shows part of the skyline from the funicular.
The photos aren’t that great quality to be honest because she tends to not be good at taking photos of things that aren’t herself.
She did like living in Pittsburgh but she also wanted to leave the US and give up her green card. We had both agreed on the move to Ireland hence why I put in all the effort/money towards it. She also hated working there. She cleaned hotels and worked overnight at Target(which I think may have triggered things) but wasn’t putting in any effort into improving herself such as working on her driver’s license. I’d tell her to try and apply for other jobs but then she would be self conscious about her English and wouldn’t apply. She seems to miss Pittsburgh, but has also lost all her documents that would allow her to live in the US. Plus with the current political climate there I don’t know if moving back there with her right now would be a wise decision.
Neither of us had family out in Pittsburgh, while we could hypothetically survive on just my income, it’d require me working overtime constantly to pay for everything and any time off I’d mostly be catching up on rest. At least here in Ireland there’s property I inherited from my grandfather that I can use and I wouldn’t necessarily have to work as much.
Anyway I was wondering do those with bipolar usually come back once properly medicated?Her family have been helping her with treatment and want us back together. She hasn’t reestablished contact with anyone whom she had delusions of and we were together for 7 years.
Hi Sully,
I hope you can bear with me while I try to describe what I have learned.
If we could pull back and try to picture all the symptoms of mental issues as a variety of colored marbles spilled out on the floor. There are blue marbles - and to complicate it- the blue marbles are of various hues, in fact all of the marbles the reds, the greens etc, are of various shades and hues.
If we begin picking out the symptoms our family members are displaying, we can end up with quite a handful of various colors.
Someone else, with the same diagnosis as our family member, could be an entirely different collection of marbles.
The families dealing with bipolar are choosing from the same collection of marbles, the one marble that doesn’t show up in both collections (supposedly) is the “voices” marble.
To treat these various collections of marbles, there is a collection of medications. Trial and error, results may vary, as they used to say.
While schizophrenia is acknowledged as the most severe of the mental issues, both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are on spectrums. Conceivably, someone could have more severe bipolar symptoms than another person’s schizophrenia symptoms.
Recovery results do vary, lots of reason to hope, recovery requires not just meds but supportive therapy as well. We have to have reasonable expectations of our loved ones and keep an open mind to what their recovery will look like.
I feel for you bro. I was married for 9 years to the mother of my children. Eventually it got too dangerous-crazy for a home with children and i divorced her. I think she was undiagnosed SZ and died pretty young (59). When my kids scattered her ashes i welled up in tears and said i really really tried. Meds do seem to help some people but these disfunctions are rarely cured in todays medical scene. Sometimes it is more practical to let go and take care of ourselves. It doesnt preclude helping them down the road. When we are in a stronger detached position ourselves we can even be better situated to help with real resources. Its YOUR call. I have heard of a spouse that have stuck by his wife (youtube valerie smith) for 40 years until she got better on carnivior diet. I cant help but feel Medicine really us failing us all.
Regular blood testing is common for people being treated with lithium carbonate for bipolar disorder, as is misrepresenting, misinterpreting or misunderstanding treatment or diagnosis. Getting an MRI isn’t a common diagnostic tool for psychosis and I’d either chalk that up to delusional interpretation of what the psychiatrist said, or some question of a possible brain tumor (perhaps at your wife’s prompting). Vitamin B12, D and K deficiencies have been theorized as having some bearing on the severity of psychosis and depressive symptoms, but this leans more to correlation rather than causation and it would be an unusual or even fringe practice to go straight to this kind of testing.
Early on, my daughter had an MRI to rule out a brain tumor. I think ruling out a physical causes is important. Not that severe mental illness isn"t a physical issue - its a brain disorder/desease. It would remove so much stigma if it could be seen as a physical illness.
As @hope said, the range of symptoms means that the bipolar-schizophrenia spectrum expresses itself differently in everyone.. My daughter has a combination of bipolar 1 and schizophrenia and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Sometimes, even with closely monitored medication and weekly therapy, she’ll cycle into mood issues that include rage and HI (she recently had urges to kill me in my sleep), sometimes SI, often with simultaneous paranoia (usually most intensely directed at me)and other psychotic symptoms that are less intense because of the meds. This latest episode caused her to take a 2 month leave from work to address her rage and paranoia and do a med change. In between, she functions well, considering.
Perhaps its possible to convince her to have DNA testing done to look at the meds that are most likely to be effective. Maybe her sister could do that. Its a simple cheek swab sent to a company called GeneSight for analysis. Often, people are put on a combination of a mood stabilizer and antipsychotic.