Is the label of "Bipolar" helpful to anyone – least of all the wearer? Does it serve a purpose at all?
I am fortunate enough to have a great personal friend who is a psychologist. She has been living in another country since just before my diagnosis so wasn’t around when I was admitted to hospital and received my diagnosis. She has now returned to live in the UK and has been spending time with me again. She is horrified – and I use that word without exaggeration of her feelings – about the diagnosis.
First off, she just doesn’t consider that I have the illness: after all, she has known me since my eldest daughter was 3,( so for 6 years in total) and through all those years when my children were very, very young. Our children are the same age so she knows how stressful and difficult it can be but she thought I was rearing them perfectly well. She’s a child psychologist so has a good idea about what constitutes “good parenting” and what doesn’t. During this time, I wasn’t medicated so she knew me when I was supposedly “ill” and not on medication. She says it never crossed her mind that I was suffering from Bipolar as she says I never exhibited any signs. She considered me then and now to be completely competent at looking after the children.
She thinks I ought to go and get another opinion, as does my consulting psychologist as do two other doctors who I met over the summer and who witnessed me every day with my children for 2 weeks on holiday (I took the kids away on my own for 2 weeks and these doctors were staying in the same resort: our children got on famously). None of these people consider that I am ill.
Secondly, she has asked me what good the label has done for me. In her view, it is utterly pointless to give someone the lable of “Bipolar” as it doesn’t do the sufferer nor anyone else any good at all; it just causes numerous problems. She argues that the treatment would remain the same regardless of the label: ie an anti-depressant and a mood stabiliser. She says that many people she knows are on mood stabilising drugs but they haven’t been given (or don’t disclose) an official label. As such, they don’t have to go through the inconvenience, anxiety, pain and humiliation of informing insurance companies, the DVLA, their employer, friends, family etc or have it used against them in Children’s Act proceedings.
My own view, having suffered so badly from the consequences of having been given the label over the past 3 years since being given the diagnosis is NO IT ISN’T HELPFUL AT ALL!!!
It has ruined my life – and I’m not exaggerating. My relationships with my husband, with some of our friends, with my work, with the Court hearing, with neighbours, with the children’s schools, with my son’s medical team: all of these relationships have been tested and to what end? None of them needed to know – it hasn’t helped any of them, nor me. If I had simply gone to the psychiatrist, quietly took the recommended medication and kept my mouth shut, nobody would be any the wiser and my life might have stayed intact.
As it is, I took the view that I had to tell people as a “responsible” thing to do as I was “ill” and therefore people ought to know in case I had some kind of breakdown and then people would be able to know what to do. NONSENSE!!! They still don’t have a clue what to do if I become ill. They still don’t understand the illness in any event, nor do most of them take the trouble to try and understand it. My true friends couldn’t give a stuff anyway: they have all told me that they don’t care whether I have the illness or not, they treasure my friendship and that’s all they care about. My family are all convinced that I am not ill and are behind me regardless of what any medical team say: they love and support me. My employer still doesn’t know because I don’t feel I can risk my job: no matter what the legislation regarding Disability Discrimination, it isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference to whether or not I would remain employed. Yes I could sue, but where would that get me? A few months loss of earnings if I’m lucky and after I’d spent even more months in highly stressful litigation and incurring more legal fees. Pointless.
No, the only way to live with an illness like Bipolar is to keep it from everyone (except probably your blood family) or be so famous like Stephen Fry that nobody gives a stuff, least of all Stephen as he is already a success and has no children to worry about……..Good on him (and I mean that – I think the guy is great!) But I’m not in that position so, from now on, I’m going to keep quiet about it and pray that I don’t ever have to tell anyone else………………and maybe I can gradually rebuild my life.
