Relatives and BP

Do you have any siblings, parents or (other) relatives with SZ or BP (or schizoaffective disorder)?

If you do, do they have the same diagnosis or a different one (or should they, probably, have)? Do you have a borderline personality?

I'm trying to ascertain whether BPD, BP-I or BP-II has different predictive value as to (blood) relatives, siblings, parents.

It might be more interesting than you think. SZ tends to be more isolated than BP, for example, and BPD might be more likely in combination with SZ (even if one doesn't also have BP).

BP-II might occur in greater isolation than BP-I. And BP-I might occur more together with SZ. Those two things are less surprising.

What's also interesting is whether BP predisposes one to marry into a family where some might have BP, SZ or BPD, in whatever way or for whatever reason.

Nope. I'm the only one with special powers

No. To my knowledge anyway.

But depression and anxiety does for sure.

I do have relatives with BP. Along with adHD autism depression anxiety and epilepsy which interestingly enough I read all can be related

It is apparent to me my mother was significantly mentally ill - likely bipolar. Interestingly enough there are a number of reatives on her side of the family that have bipolar or other mood disorders. Anxiety seems to go through my father's side. My own son's anxiety presents itself as OCD. I have wondered about my daughter's health too.

Just curious, would the autism be Asperger's or HFA, or classic autism?

I should actually have included unipolar depression. It's (of course) common.

ADHD (and ASD) might be common because BP isn't (yet) recognised as a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Aspergers! I read they can all be related to the same gene but theye are early studies

It's not early, but conflicting: "conflicting"/paradoxical findings.

Biochemically, there probably are more differences, but also overlap. It's difficult. Two opposing (types of) theories.

What makes it extremely difficult is that ASD overlaps with SZ and BP (the syndromes, objectively). So there's likely a lot of misdiagnoses or "inherently" invalid/immaterial diagnoses.

Autism used to be a part of schizophrenia, just a subset of its symptoms. So arguably, there are two (underlying, endophenotypical/genetic) autisms.

I strongly believe in the "diametrically opposed" theory of ASD and SZ/BP. That would mean there are a lot of misdiagnoses.

That ASD is overdiagnosed may in part be (it's very likely) that ASD is considered neurodevelopmental, unlike SZ/BP. In pretty much all cases, for mental disorder diagnostics, a diagnostic hierarchy is used, where organic disorders, like ASD, take precedence over functional psychoses, like SZ/BP. In other words, if ASD is "discovered" the clinician/diagnostician doesn't have to look further.

Another reason (for misdiagnoses) may be that ASD can be diagnosed faster than BP/SZ, since it's not episodic.

Basically, there are a lot of people with "ASD" and psychosis. There are. That doesn't make sense.

And it makes perfect sense there are conflicting findings when many with "ASD" are misdiagnosed.

It doesn't mean they are misdiagnosed of course. Maybe just one mutation, unstable gene, might make the difference. Or something else.

Are they (or is he/she) a blood relative(s)? What age?

My Dad was diagnosed BP too. My grandmother was also affected, but so long ago, she never got a correct diagnosis. My sister has very similar symptoms as mine, but was diagnosed with depression, not BP. She doesn't see a psychiatrist though, so who knows on that one.

my mom is bipolar so was her dad (who I never met), but he committed suicide, which doesn't make me feel so good I guess.

Blood relative who is 17 now. He is classic CLASSIC aspergers. Definitely not misdiagnosed. You would meet him and dx him yourself in two minutes. He almost falls into more non functioning autism as he will never be able to live by himself yet he creates amazing art out of .....trash yes trash!! Very amazing stuff
Idk If all comes from same gene but in my family it we would make sense. My grandmother died in a mental Institution ect ect in my family mental illness runs hard

Looking at all these posts, I guess I'm the odd duck... but I suppose if you look far enough up anyone's family tree, you won't find traces of BP. It has to start somewhere.

I'm the lucky one who starts BP in my family tree!

On a side note, this is partially why my pdoc was so hesitant about my BP diagnosis (and why I had a hard time accepting it). He said that BP tends to run in the family, but I have no family history.

My dad was never diagnosed but there is no doubt in my mind he had bp

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My cousin (also) has BP1. He was found on the streets of a city in rags saying/believing he was Jesus Christ and the rest is Lithium history.

Depression is pretty clear with several members of my immediate and extended family. No one that I am aware of has had a bipolar diagnosis but me, but I don't assume to know everything about everyone in my family. We all suspect something was going on with my grandmother, but she was of a generation and age that didn't seek out professional help for such things. My guess is that she probably did have bipolar disorder based on what I remember and the stories about her.

My aunt on my dad's side has bp II and PTSD and a cousin on my mom's side has bp I. My maternal grandma has generalized anxiety disorder, and my grandpa is a hoarder. My mom's brother has depression and dyslexia. My dad claims he has bp but hasn't been diagnosed. I had an aunt on my mom's side who committed suicide and based on what I remember of her I think she may have had BPD or bipolar, and I think my mom has seasonal affective disorder (the winter blues), and I'm fairly certain a cousin on my mom's side has ASPD, but these are just my speculations.
It sounds like a lot but it's a really big family so it's really only a few people.

Yes, that's very interesting! Any relatives with dyslexia?

BP1, schizophrenia, autism, adhd very strong in my family. Grandparent, Mother BP, father SZ, aunts, Uncles, 1st cousin, nieces, nephews.

My husband family the same mental health and autism very strong. I would have to marry in. My son adhd, autism, my daughter, ADD, GAD I always felt autism.

Thanks

Annmaria

Bipolar, schizophrenia, autism, adhd very strong in my family. Grandparent, Mother BP, father SZ, Brothers, Sisters, aunts, Uncles, 1st cousin, nieces, nephews.

My husband family the same mental health and autism very strong. I would have to marry in. My son adhd, autism, my daughter, ADD, GAD I always felt autism. Cousins with dyslexia and a brother, granduncle, 3 1st cousin who commit suicide. Depression also very strong with many relatives. Dyspraxia also and speech and language difficulties, learning difficulties.

Thanks

Annmaria

When I was in the hospital, one of the education classes I attended was taught by a really awesome and knowledgeable psychologist. According to him, research has shown that for those of us with mental illness, at least one other relative will be found with mental illness; however, that can be as far back as 7 generations statistically which makes it hard to discover since often older generations didn't seek out professional evaluation/help for mental illness. For chemical dependency/addictions, statistically you rarely have to go back more than 3 generations to find a relative with addiction. The one thing I never got from him was the actual studies/literature he was getting that information from, but it does seem to illustrate the difficulty of discovering the family correlation for serious mental illness; it just may have been so far back and most of us know very little of our families beyond 3 or 4 generations at best.

At least it'll never be 100% (if it's estimated/established using statistics) and if you look at it statistically, the likelihood that it's not pure chance that you'll find someone with a mental disorder most probably decreases with every generation. So it might be true, but not significant. Logical. Obvious. Unimportant. Meaningless.

It's more likely he bases it on research that claims to show (or is cited as claiming in the popular press, mostly as "research has shown...") that everyone and any other person, knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows that other person. The theory behind it predicts there are six degrees of separation between every two persons.

Even if that were true, it's meaningless (for our purposes and just mostly). And it's not about generations but people knowing people. Maybe that's the reason for the seventh link/relation. It's an interesting theory either way, but it means that there couldn't be any scientific evidence that people with relatives going back for seven generations with mental illness have anything in common other than being or having been, alive.

I wonder if my father could have a touch of bipolar. My only sibling is my brother who is 6 years older than I. I believe almost without doubts that my brother has bipolar. My cousin on my moms side has it and my mothers aunt used to hear them talking to her on the radio so something going on there. My grandmother on my fathers side had paranoid schizophrenia and her brother had classic schizophrenia. Mental illness run rampant in my family.... On both sides.

My grandmother's brother, I guess that would make him my great uncle, had schizophrenia. I have Schizoaffective disorder.

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