[SunAngel]

did you inherit it from?

It would have to be on my dad's side of the family, although some of my mom's relatives show signs of something.

My great uncle was definitely schizophrenic, my grandmother was definitely OCD and BP, and my dad was an undiagnosed BP and was 100% OCD.

My mom and dad both had severe anxiety too.

I was the lucky sperm that won because I got every single one of them, whereas my sister is MI-free.

Who did you inherit it from do you think or do you not really know?

[Bipolar Mark]

My dad suffers with depression and his mother was sectioned under the mental health act with manic depression as it was called then and psychosis

[unaluna]

my whole family is nuts, up, down, and sideways. when my friends hear the stories, they acknowledge i'm the normal one.

[Ryask]

My grandmother, my mother and all her sisters have severe depression at times yet none of them ever got help or diagnosed.

[popeye]

I got it from my mothers side ...lots of Bipolars and alcoholics. My brother is bipolar too and his meds don't work very well...I am lucky mine work

[BNLsMOM]

As far as I know it was my grandfathers on both sides of the family. On my mother's side, he was bipolar for sure diagnosed and took lithium. On my father's side it isn't as clear. He was an alcoholic and committed suicide when my Dad was 2 years old.

It skipped a generation and came to me. My sister definitely has something going on, but she has never sought help and probably won't.

[popeye]

I have 5 kids..one is a sted daughter and I think she has a personality disorder...my wife is borderline personality. My step daughter is a heroin addict. 3 of my own kids show signs of Bipolar and one is an alcoholic but they don't want to talk about it. I think they are in denial.

[GreenIvy]

It is hard to say. I am the first person in my family diagnosed with it. I was told there were psychiatric issues on my dad's side of the family and my dad's father is quite eccentric at times. I was also told that my mom's mother thought she had schizophrenia but that she was cured (not sure exactly what I believe about this but she hasn't had any known symptoms for over 30 years). I am a lot like my mom in many ways, including some of my mood swings. She is familiar with the symptoms of BP and doesn't think she has it. I have a brother and he doesn't have it. It is very hard to say where I get it from.

[Trippin2.0]

I'm the odd one out...

I'm actually the first in my family to have Bipolar Disorder. However, there is depression, anxiety, and OCD in my family in my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

My father

[Martek]

My uncle was an alcoholic and took his life so there is probably more to it but no one talks about it. My cousin was a lot like me but he passed having severe medical problems and stopped taking drugs probably suicide through neglect? I think he had some suicidal tendencies but like me was afraid to go through with it, when the opportunity came up to just stop taking drugs for his pancreas it was an easy way to go. I really wish we had talked more about it, at the time I think we were both in denial, today maybe we could have helped each other.

[Visioneer]

Great grandmother - Alzhemiers
Great aunt 1 - schizophrenic, institutionalized until death from age 14
Great aunt 2 - Alzheimers
Great uncle - Alzheimers, nervous breakdown after accidentally killing turtle on fishing trip. Too many things to name
Grandmother, maternal - Alzheimers
Uncle 1 - not sure... hallucinations, depression, using Olanzapine, alcoholic, 56 y.o. bachelor. Was hospitalized once, lives with my parents for 25 years
Uncle 2 - alcohol abuse, 54 y.o. bachelor, quirky
Uncle 3 - alcohol abuse, SI in past, drugs, married with two kids
Cousin 1 - OCD, depression, abusive relationships. Surprisingly well adjusted under circumstances and doing well at University
Cousin 2 - developmentally delayed, but great kid
Aunt - depression, hoarding, anxiety, nervous breakdown, on permanent disability for mental issues for 25 years
Father - possible NPD/BPD, very difficult to deal with, mild stroke
Mother - codependant, possible cyclothymic (too hard to explain, very weird person)
Brother - never had a serious relationship at 28, spends A LOT of time on intricate hobbies and running

Lots of quirky reltaives in general; perpetually single, not socially conforming, etc.

Me - Bipolar II/NOS (with delusions/hypnagogic hallucinations from insomnia, mixed states), obsessive tendencies in thought - internal dialogue and uncontrollable sounds, germaphobia with obsessive tendencies, sensory overload - from noise (at one point made my job unbearable and caused nervous breakdown), odours (this is a huge problem every day), sometimes textures or being touched, repetitive movements, crowds, social phobia, panic attacks and general anxiety, difficulty with breaking routines and going outside, ED related to stress and starvation and emotional eating/beingeing, past substance abuse/addiction, abusive relationships, emotionally/mentally/physically abusive childhood. In therapy, impossible to live/function without medication.

In short, there is a history, yes.

[SunAngel]

Originally Posted by Martek

My uncle was an alcoholic and took his life so there is probably more to it but no one talks about it. My cousin was a lot like me but he passed having severe medical problems and stopped taking drugs probably suicide through neglect? I think he had some suicidal tendencies but like me was afraid to go through with it, when the opportunity came up to just stop taking drugs for his pancreas it was an easy way to go. I really wish we had talked more about it, at the time I think we were both in denial, today maybe we could have helped each other.

Martek, I am very sorry to here about your losses.

[lostbythesea]

my great uncle had it but mine is believed to be from exposure to an antidepressant that i did not need...
Was put on prozac and did not have seratonin imbalence had nuerprenephrine imbalance.
So i developed bi polar. or atleast that is what my pdoc says.
Got to love the military. lmao

[SunAngel]

Originally Posted by lostbythesea

my great uncle had it but mine is believed to be from exposure to an antidepressant that i did not need...
Was put on prozac and did not have seratonin imbalence had nuerprenephrine imbalance.
So i developed bi polar. or atleast that is

what my pdoc says.
Got to love the military. lmao

lostbythesea, antidepressants usually make people with BP Disorder manic. It never actually causes BP. I think your pdoc needs to go back to med. school.

I am being totally serious here.

[astone131]

I got it from my moms side. Grandpa is definitly BP and mom is too but wont go get help. I got the addiction part from my sperm donors side of the family. Grandma has anxiety and has had a nervous breakdown. I am just afraid one of my children will end up with it .

It's hard to say with absolute certainty. There certainly is a lot of evidence scattered around both sides. Thing is, and I think a lot of the older ones among us can testify to it, is that back in the day, things were so much more in the closet, swept under the rug and simply not talked about. Problems, and people too, simply did not exist, if anything was "embarassing". It's sad really. Or, at best, things were couched in more palatable expressions. This struck me particularly in the case of my paternal grandmother. It had always been put as, "she drank herself to death". I don't know if the people who said it really believed that, or just couldn't bring themselves to see or say what it really was. One day, it struck me that something was amiss. She really wasn't even a drinker. I do know that she had become completely despondant and did not want to go on (my dad, her son, told me how very hard he tried to convince her to want to live). She stopped eating. And took up drinking. Big time. Here's where I get speculative about why she went about it this way. She was a staunch old-school Irish Catholic. Any overt method would undoubtedly have seemed too sinful to her. I just think she just didn't know what else to do. So I'm calling a spade a spade. It was suicide.

Probably the most obvious answer would be my mother. No dx (unthinkable!), but saw all the evidence first hand growing up. Very indicative of BP. (Additionally, she has become a horrific hoarder.) Even years later, my sister tried to broach the topic with my grandfather (not my biological one, he'd died of alcoholism), because we all lived in the same house. She was shut down immediately. They knew she had something seriously wrong, yet despite the havoc it had caused us as kids, they had never intervened, nor would talk about it at all. Ever.

So, long and short, it's a lot of clue gathering in the closets, but it sure didn't come out of nowhere.

[zbmom]

My maternal great grandfather was BP I, out of his 8 kids 4 of them have BP I or II (one of which is my grandma), my aunt and uncle have BP and my mom is bpd (not dx but textbook). Pretty much everyone on my mom's side has some kind of mood disorder. My dad's side is all alcholism and substance abuse infused.

[Moose72]

My dad is an alcoholic. I suspect though that I got it from my mom mostly. She seems to have BPD. She is undiagnosed- except she has a book about it hidden away- and refuses to see anybody for anything. She always thinks things are everybody's fault but her own. She immediately takes the opposite side of whatever I say- no matter if its that she's great. Its a knee-jerk reaction. I think I'm doing well to have BP and stay healthy in SPITE of being in the face of that nearly every single day. Its exhausting and its twisted and its annoying. Someone that has to be right all the time to the point of teeter-tottering back and forth between two sides at break-neck speed in order to be on top. The stress of this no doubt brought my BP to the forefront and someone like that RARELY has compassion for what we as BPs go through. Also on my dad's side, his brothers and sister have their own issues - one is anni/B since at least the late 80's - seems its from their father being a pedophile. Yeah he's still alive but in another country many miles away, so my kids have grown up away from that.

[SunAngel]

Well it seems to hold true for most of us that we came from families with MI's.

[kj44]

My dad, and probably his mom, since she left him and his sister at table when they were 2 and 3! They were adopted, into a mean alcoholic family.

[Secretum]

My brother is the only other immediate family member with a diagnosis (ADHD). However, my dad is very likely to also have ADHD, and my mom could easily have cyclothymia (or dysthymia; hard to tell). My grandma was diagnosed with depression a few years ago. My other grandma unfortunately died from Alzheimer's. And apparently I have a "crazy" great-great uncle who used to run around the streets naked. Maybe he was manic, maybe he was psychotic...or maybe he was healthy and had a rational explanation for his behavior! So I have a family history of MI, but I don't put much stock in it as an explanation for my bp because these disorders are so common. There are probably very few families who don't have at least one member with ADHD, depression, or Alzheimer's.

Both sides. Mainly BP, addictions (alcohol, meth, coke, painkillers), personality disorders, psychotic disorders, & OCD. I've never really been very close with either side, but that's as far as I've been able to deduce.

[sugahorse1]

No-one in my family is diagnosed with BP or depression, but my mom's dad is cooked, lol