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I can attest to this. Grew up with Bipolar II, and Christmas was always the worst due to the dissonance of the joy around you and your own bad feelings. Birthda

by cairo_x 10y ago

I can attest to this. Grew up with Bipolar II, and Christmas was always the worst due to the dissonance of the joy around you and your own bad feelings. Birthdays were worse, because then you couldn't escape the attention. I specifically requested to stop having birthday parties -rather to just have a small family dinner. I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. I really wish I was diagnosed earlier, but what can you do? It breaks my heart to think of any kid going through the same thing and it just being dismissed, but what are they supposed to do? If you're going to get a proper diagnosis you need a referral to see a psychiatrist. If you're a bit iffy and the doctor doesn't think a referral is in order you're likely to wind up with a number of wrong diagnoses. I don't think at that age I was even capable of explaining all my symptoms thoroughly enough for even a psychiatrist to figure out the whole picture. This is why physical diagnoses needs to step up to the plate. There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all.

stephengillie 10y ago
> I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. > There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all. And that's relying on the parents to even be looking for issues in their offspring. If they're narcissistic, the child could go undiagnosed.
- cairo_x 10y ago
  You can't blame parents for their child's depression. You can't expect even the most seasoned psychiatric worker to be able to diagnose depression from sight. Currently self-reporting is the only way to diagnose. Observation simply doesn't work. There was a great doco on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql) where they had a house full of people with various different mental illnesses, and trained psychiatric professionals watching on CCTV. Over the course of the show, not one of them made a correct diagnosis by observing behaviour. So how can parents be expected to pick up the signs?
  - mercer 10y ago
    I'll have to watch the documentary to be sure, but I find it hard to believe this is true. Oftentimes, but definitely not always, it's surprising to me how easy it is to detect cases of childhood abuse, autism, bipolar disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder, based on very limited interaction. Obviously one is never sure, but very often the symptoms are 'textbook' enough that at the very least an informed guess can be made. I'm willing to say I'm entirely wrong about this though. It's just been my experience so far.
    - cairo_x 10y ago
      I can understand being able to pick up on autism, and some personality disorders. Mood disorders -- unless there is obvious suicide or psychosis -- can be tricky though. Some people are just really energetic, and fit, and excitable. Some people act out their emotions more than others so it can seem more than it really is. Giving unsolicited diagnoses puts you at risk of being accused of being a 'gaslighter', etc. In many cases it's like if you see a really skinny person and are convinced they are anorexic... Some people are just skinny, just like many people put on weight alarmingly easy. And then there's malingering psychosis -- there's a horror film. I'm pretty sure I knew someone like this, but I could never say anything (I suspected they had BPD and were feigning psychosis.)
Fnoord 10y ago
According to Wikipedia, Bipolar II is hard to diagnose. A lot of personality disorders also have an onset in late youth/early adulthood. IOW, you cannot diagnose those yet at a pre-teen age. There's a big taboo concerning depression. It isn't regarded as a disease, in social life those who are negative tend to get avoided. As for rewards like presents, I simply don't get the whole theatre behind it. It is just trading, often nowhere near original, and I too often don't know what on earth to buy for someone, ending up with cheesy things. You ask something, and you either get exactly what you want (no surprise), you get something you don't want and did not ask for (negative surprise) or you get something you did not ask for and do want (positive surprise). Now, how to make someone positively surprised if they already feel they got pretty much everything? If the only things they do want are rather expensive? If they don't need yet another cheap thing such as perfume while they already have their own expensive perfume brand which bottle is not even half empty? My point is that it can be extremely difficult to satisfy someone's needs. Not merely mine; the ones of all my peers. Now consider I was like this as a child as well (probably why I am like this now). Perhaps therein lies the difference. The non depressed are happy to receive a gift, never mind that it is merely a custom whereas the depressed see through the custom. One could argue the latter is smarter, but is that true from a biological PoV?
- cairo_x 10y ago
  I grew up with pretty left wing parents who were against consumerism. I liked the gifts and the principal of a fun pagan silly ritual where be re-express our love for one another. I never felt displeasure with being given a gift in my life. Guilt, maybe, that I couldn't show more pleasure in the situation, but kids are pretty good at hiding their emotions. Sometimes the act drops, and then observers just say you're having a bad day. I find the idea that depressed people have a gift at seeing through fakery as troubling. It is a correlation and causation thing. If I was depressed everything seemed shit, even the stuff that wasn't fake, so of course it might look enlightened in certain situations. I think a lot of those studies are flawed pop-psychology type stuff that I wouldn't put much value in.
douche 10y ago
My birthday is always the worst day of the year. Of course, it's also in the depths of March, when it's freezing cold, icy, and dark. But it's also a silly custom that everyone else gets much too excited about, and so the disconnect between their expectations of my emotions and my lack of emotion about it is somewhat painful.

by cairo_x 10y ago

stephengillie 10y ago

> I think my parents were just baffled, thought I was moody/cynical. > There needs to be a blood test, or something like it, rather than having to rely on baffled parents, or patients who might not even realize certain symptoms are even worth bringing up at all. And that's relying on the parents to even be looking for issues in their offspring. If they're narcissistic, the child could go undiagnosed.

cairo_x 10y ago
You can't blame parents for their child's depression. You can't expect even the most seasoned psychiatric worker to be able to diagnose depression from sight. Currently self-reporting is the only way to diagnose. Observation simply doesn't work. There was a great doco on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fm5ql) where they had a house full of people with various different mental illnesses, and trained psychiatric professionals watching on CCTV. Over the course of the show, not one of them made a correct diagnosis by observing behaviour. So how can parents be expected to pick up the signs?
- mercer 10y ago
  I'll have to watch the documentary to be sure, but I find it hard to believe this is true. Oftentimes, but definitely not always, it's surprising to me how easy it is to detect cases of childhood abuse, autism, bipolar disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder, based on very limited interaction. Obviously one is never sure, but very often the symptoms are 'textbook' enough that at the very least an informed guess can be made. I'm willing to say I'm entirely wrong about this though. It's just been my experience so far.
  - cairo_x 10y ago
    I can understand being able to pick up on autism, and some personality disorders. Mood disorders -- unless there is obvious suicide or psychosis -- can be tricky though. Some people are just really energetic, and fit, and excitable. Some people act out their emotions more than others so it can seem more than it really is. Giving unsolicited diagnoses puts you at risk of being accused of being a 'gaslighter', etc. In many cases it's like if you see a really skinny person and are convinced they are anorexic... Some people are just skinny, just like many people put on weight alarmingly easy. And then there's malingering psychosis -- there's a horror film. I'm pretty sure I knew someone like this, but I could never say anything (I suspected they had BPD and were feigning psychosis.)

Fnoord 10y ago

According to Wikipedia, Bipolar II is hard to diagnose. A lot of personality disorders also have an onset in late youth/early adulthood. IOW, you cannot diagnose those yet at a pre-teen age. There's a big taboo concerning depression. It isn't regarded as a disease, in social life those who are negative tend to get avoided. As for rewards like presents, I simply don't get the whole theatre behind it. It is just trading, often nowhere near original, and I too often don't know what on earth to buy for someone, ending up with cheesy things. You ask something, and you either get exactly what you want (no surprise), you get something you don't want and did not ask for (negative surprise) or you get something you did not ask for and do want (positive surprise). Now, how to make someone positively surprised if they already feel they got pretty much everything? If the only things they do want are rather expensive? If they don't need yet another cheap thing such as perfume while they already have their own expensive perfume brand which bottle is not even half empty? My point is that it can be extremely difficult to satisfy someone's needs. Not merely mine; the ones of all my peers. Now consider I was like this as a child as well (probably why I am like this now). Perhaps therein lies the difference. The non depressed are happy to receive a gift, never mind that it is merely a custom whereas the depressed see through the custom. One could argue the latter is smarter, but is that true from a biological PoV?

cairo_x 10y ago
I grew up with pretty left wing parents who were against consumerism. I liked the gifts and the principal of a fun pagan silly ritual where be re-express our love for one another. I never felt displeasure with being given a gift in my life. Guilt, maybe, that I couldn't show more pleasure in the situation, but kids are pretty good at hiding their emotions. Sometimes the act drops, and then observers just say you're having a bad day. I find the idea that depressed people have a gift at seeing through fakery as troubling. It is a correlation and causation thing. If I was depressed everything seemed shit, even the stuff that wasn't fake, so of course it might look enlightened in certain situations. I think a lot of those studies are flawed pop-psychology type stuff that I wouldn't put much value in.

douche 10y ago

My birthday is always the worst day of the year. Of course, it's also in the depths of March, when it's freezing cold, icy, and dark. But it's also a silly custom that everyone else gets much too excited about, and so the disconnect between their expectations of my emotions and my lack of emotion about it is somewhat painful.