I keep wondering if some people all over the world have bipolar. How do I find out, or if it's only in the USA and some western European countries? If so, what do bipolar people in less industrialized countries do about their bipolar? Do people who live in communal families get bipolar?

Does anyone have links that tell about this?

[Icare dixit]

We're everywhere!

[Icare dixit]

There's research being done the world over (which is interesting because genetics do differ).

[Standup2me]

I'm from Canada. I've seen people from all over on here.

[JustJace2u]

I've seen people apparently from Australia on this site

[MtnTime2896]

You see it more in industrialized countries due to the financial capabilities to do such research and the people being capable to be diagnosed. However, it is all over the world. We're everywhere, like Icare dixit said.

[Ocean Swimmer]

I saw a PBS documentary. It had 3rd world countries.
In some places in Africa a child who suffers mental illness is locked in a small cell in the back yard. And sometimes they can't stand up all the way. They need to go to the bathroom in the shed. Sometimes for 15 years.
Then it had some stories about some rural areas in India. The mentally ill were locked in a bedroom. Same thing. No bathroom in there. No medical attention. No therapy. No meds.
There are people suffering the world over.

[LadyShadow]

I have to agree we are all over. I have West Indian and Saudi Arabian heritage and I have bipolar so I may be considered international

Hi everyone who had posted about internationally present mental illness and bipolar disorder. Sorry I have not thanked all of you sooner. I just figured out how to find a list of threads I subscribe to. The automatic emails I'm supposed to be getting when people reply, are not happening. What you all have written is very, very sad. Too terrible to even think about. I suppose most of us know about Dorothea Lynde Dix? She dedicated her life here in the United States, to ending the same sort of conditions mentally ill people were held in, chained to the icy walls of jails in the 19th century. Here's what wikipedia has to say about her. "Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802 – July 18, 1887) was an American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums."