I have been contacted by a distant cousin in Scotland to come up with the Canadian portion of my maternal grandmother's family tree.

This itself has been interesting. I actually had in possession a lot of the information and it wasn't too difficult to fill in the few holes and note the more recent additions.

But it has all made me wonder about mental illness up and down the family line. I am quite sure my mother was bipolar. She was a horribly abusive woman too - and I have but only to assume from whom she learnt such behaviour. Perhaps then my grandmother was touched by a mental illness of sorts herself then. I DO know that her mother in turn was a truly horrible woman i've heard referred to as 'not being all there'. And so on. There are some extreme examples of risk taking too as there are family members - most who never made it - who participated in various seafaring adventures and expiditions.

Have you considered the line of mental illness in your own family?

[ray68]

Yes, I know that most of my problems stem from my mother. She is also schizophrenic and has major depression. She was neglectful and when she was attentive she was abusive when I was young. Unfortunately she was adopted so I know nothing about anyone else from that side. On my father's side we can trace the history all the way back to the 12th century in Ireland and Switzerland. There is one sect of the tree that seems to have distanced themselves from the rest of the family after they came to America. My side of the family frequently refers to them as crazy but idk if that is just a symptom of the distance between them. My whole family on my father's side seems to have a screw or two missing haha. My Uncle's favorite pastime was fistfighting cops. Was.

[*Laurie*]

Yes, I have put a lot of thought into the mental illness in my family. I am very sure that my mom had a severe Borderline Personality Disorder. I've often wondered if my dad had a mild Bipolar disorder. My dad's aunt, my great-aunt, sadly spent her entire adult life in Creedmoor, a psychiatric institution. That was from 1920 to the 1960's. No one in my family seems to know what her diagnosis was, but if I had to guess I'd guess depression and PTSD.

[fishin fool]

I now have no doubt that my mom had bipolar and she now has full blown alzhiemers.
She paid little to no attention to us kids and when she did it was usually abusive or
just made no sense what so ever. She would have wild temper out bursts.
When I remember my Grandmother I realize that she also must have suffered from
MI and almost everyone I can think of from my mom's side must have as well.
Anyone left on my moms side I never see anymore, it's terrible how this awful thing
called MI separates families even further.

I have been taking into consideration the current generation as I have completed this tree. There seems to be some sort of MI in every line amongst my first cousins and their own generation that follows. I would fit them all into the mood disorder spectrum of illnesses. I've cousins with significant diagnosed depression and I'm a sure of more than one case of anxiety.

Though my children haven't been diagnosed, I am thinking my daughter is showing signs of bipolar while my son has obviously a classic case of anxiety and OCD.

[Baker#88]

I have done my dads side of the family, clear back to when they came here in the 1500`s a few married Native Americans, so those trails ended and my great grandmother was 100% Cherokee. I can still remember her after all of these years. She passed when I was around 3. My mom gave me a book that traces her moms side that someone made. One of my grandfathers was the first motorcycle cop in Racine, Wisconsin! I thought that was pretty neat. Her dad was adopted, so that was another dead end in a way. He knew his real father as Uncle Fred. It can be quite interesting when you start digging for answers. I never would have known my one Uncle was a paratrooper during WW2, his brother was awarded the silver star, for bravery in action. My one uncle fought in both Korea and Vietnam as a Marine. He retired after 33+ years in the Marines. Another Uncle was shot down over North Korea, and so on. Fascinating on finding out all of this information. But, this is about all I remember. there were close to 80 people with my sur name that fought for the South in the War Between The States. There were also about 20 or so Yankees as well. I had notebooks, at least 6 of them filled with my information front and back and the margins as well. No little piece of information was over looked. I had all the family sheets completed back to when we first came over from England. Every bit of it, destroyed in the flood of 2007. This just crushed my spirit to try and do everything again. I should but I just don`t have the time left in my life and the finances to do it. I will pass on what I know to my kids and can only hope they are interested enough to pursue it......

[Unrigged64072835]

My mom did it for her side of the family. I had to go to Ancestry.com for my dad's side.

[jaynedough]

One of my ancestors was an alcoholic moonshiner. He disappeared and later his remains were identified by his jug that was with him. Supposedly my grandfather was alcoholic, but he died when my dad was young, so idk. My parents both drank a lot. They also had anxiety and depression. Some of my cousins have those also.

I can only know as far back as my grandparents as records further back give very little detail.

One of my grandmothers spent time in a mental institution, 'nervous breakdown' as it was then called. My other grandmother had long term addiction to tranquillisers following being widowed. There are other family members too but they are still living so I don't like to write about them.

I have often felt I may be predestined to have MH issues. It's not something I like to dwell upon.

[zijax]

My Mother's side is Scottish' the MacKinlay clan. They make their own scotch. My mother drinks every night without fail but holds her liquor pretty well. My aunt, her sister, is a full blown alcoholic and has depression. My Dad's side is English. My Dad is on medication and my step-mom said he was dxed as a Narcissistic per dis. His sister, my aunt is dead, but was also a major alcoholic. One of my grand-mother's was obese and the other was the meanest lady in town.

Well this goes to show how imbalanced and a self-centered narcissitic a woman my mother was. I received from my relation a family history. My mother had us all believing her mother was of highly privileged and important family stock. She told stories of her mother leaving wealth and a lady's maid for a cabin in remote northern Canada. Now I find out her mother's father wasn't an important man of money but the owner of a fruit shop! The man wasn't of privileged society. He was just like me! He worked with his hands.

[ReptileInYourHead]

Mental illness is rampant in my family, I don't know one family member that hasn't been affected. Though, real father was adopted (step dad too, he didn't find out until he was almost 50), they both grew up in abusive homes, my moms mom left her family when my mom was small, step mom was abusive.
It's just ridiculous, the cycle a country, a town, a family can perpetuate. It's horrible, I feel for anyone was has experienced it.
Getting off topic, family trees are fun, but I'm actually afraid of what I would find. I could search the multitude of degenerates, alchoholics, abusers for a feel good story but don't know if it's worth it.

[TishaBuv]

I don't think they were MI as much as they were victims of circumstance and did desperate things due to that.

I don't know my whole fam tree. There have always been lots of falling outs in the fam and they wouldn't speak again.

My grandma was always 'nervous' and pill popping.
My grandpa could not sit still.
There were tragedies, deaths, depression stemming from losses.
My other grandfather was a villain.
The great grandparents fled oppression. The only bad thing I heard was he was a cheater and she hated him for it. And she used to play mind games with my grandma and her twin sister.
That's as far back as I know.

[Yours_Truly]

I don't know much about my lineage, but I was told that my paternal grandmother was depressive and that I had a great aunt who was physically abusive to a 2nd cousin. And as I've mentioned before, both my parents suffered from depression all throughout growing up. My father's was deep and mostly silent, my mother's was deep and dramatic. Of my entire family, I used to say that only one member of us was the "white sheep" of the family, implying the rest of us, including myself, were the "black sheep".

[Artchic528]

I can trace my family lineage all the way back to 1000 AD, or thereabouts. Well, there are ancestors we can find that far back at any rate. As for the more recent ancestry, my great grandfather and great grandmother both lived in rural farmland type country in Belgium. When Hitler and his political party rose to power and began invading and occupying more and more land during WWI, the German army, of course, took over and occupied Belgium. Great Grandpa managed to escape before it got too bad, but Great Grandma was forced to deal with the occupation first hand. She grew to resent Germany and Germans in general, because the German soldiers who ordered her and her family around and forced them to clean up after and make food for the soldiers who lived in their own home.

Anyways, Great Grandpa joined the US Calvary, and was tasked with taking care of the horses in addition to his other duties. He was a natural horseman. He and the US Calvary fought hard and when great grandpa had earned enough money, he secured Great Grandma's passage to America.

It was no secret that my great grandmother was stubborn and hotheaded. She and Grandma didn't exactly see eye to eye when Grandma bought a $500 dollar wedding dress, which, in today's money, would have been over $5,000. My grandmother didn't exactly have a wealth of money to spend, but I guess she wanted at least one luxury in her life. My grandmother inherited this hotheaded stubborn gene, which she passed down to my mother and her 3 sisters, and then on down to me. I guess it was a mental illness that went undiagnosed back in the day, but gradually became more and more noticeable as it was passed on down.

That was my maternal grandmother's parents and my maternal Grandma. My Maternal Grandfather's parents lived in the Netherlands, and after discovering some old Spanish doubloons hidden under the false bottom of a sewing box, they used the money from selling them to come to America. There, they had little money and survived their first winter in a sod house, burning twisted slough grass and eating bread made from grinding whatever they could scavenge off of their neighbor's fields after they had harvested in a coffee grinder (much like how Laura Ingalls and her family survived that long harsh winter). After that, Great Grandpa then founded a business selling feed and seed and livestock, and my grandpa took over the business when he was old enough.

I could go on and on about my family, there's even a thick notebook about my maternal grandfather's genealogy on a shelf somewhere in the house. However, my maternal grandfather's family was all very soft-spoken and gentle, and all of my grandpa's siblings, and himself included, had a great sense of humor. Jokes abound on that side of the family. Alcoholism does too. My grandpa's brother had suffered from alcoholism until he found redemption from it through his faith.

All this history made for the perfect storm for me when combined with my dad's family history of stubbornness and hotheadedness and anger management issues. My dad's family is almost infamous for being neigh unswayable in an argument. You might as well be arguing with a fence post, they say. I'm no exception.