Do you believe BP is a spectrum mental illness?

I'm the same way. I don't know why either. I don't really feel it applies much to bipolar for some strange reason.

On the other hand, I have a 10.5 year old daughter I feel is so close to being on the autism spectrum. And I do view autism as a spectrum disease, especially as I think my father is on the very end of the spectrum with Aspergers type symptoms. Of course, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, they never did diagnose things like that.

He has gotten better as he's gotten older, but it takes less than 30 seconds of talking with him for people to realize a conversation with him is just not normal. He can't read social cues at all. Growing up with it was even worse. It probably would have been better for me if I'd understood he had an actual underlying problem instead of viewing him as angry, arguing, not accepting of anyone who didn't share his viewpoint about anything. But I don't think they even diagnosed it much or talked about it a lot when I was growing up in the 1980s or 1990s. The first I ever heard of it was when I took a psychology course in college. It still took me a few years to realize, wow, that describes my dad to a "T".