I spent a week in the funny farm in mid-Feb. My pdoc doesn't do inpatient, so I worked with a friend of his who does. After 6 years of being treated for recurrent major depression (plus PTSD and anxiety, but those are irrelevant at the moment :-), Doc Friend looked over my history, noticed that the meds I've responded to best have all been for bipolar, and came up with the idea that I might really be bipolar II.

I've tried to find info on this, but can't seem to find a lot. I'm on 2 AD's, Risperdal, which was originally prescribed to help with the self-injury and which I am now so habituated to that I ended up suicidal quickly after tapering off it, and Lamictal. I was interested to see that someone described the "feeling OK, then horribly crashing" phenomenon, as that's what I was doing daily before the Lamictal kicked in. I've also been on Depakote, which I couldn't tolerate at all, and Trileptal, for about a week, before I started finding bruises in places I didn't bump.

I'd love to hear others' experiences with this sort of thing, as I like to be an educated crazy person :-) so I can educate the non-medical people who have to deal with my badly wired brain on a regular basis (like my boss). If there are any good websites out there explaining bipolar II, could somebody point me toward those too?

Thanks

Candy

There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed. -- Peter Sellers