You may have heard of the CAPACITOR THEORY OF THE PSYCHE. During mania is when
the capacitor is fully charged and has plenty of energy. Once discharged with
all that phrenetic activity, the Psyche is fully depleted.

This is time for you to be fully supportive. Its hard to try not to dissuade her
from dying as its a delusion and she keeps going on and on all the time. This is
the time to make sure she takes her medications. Also, she will go through a
rough patch as she gets better and has more energy. This is the time when she
may get a get a relapse.

You may think its counter-intuitive that she gets worse when she gets better.
But let me explain. When fully depressed, she has no energy but has delusions,
perhaps of wanting to die. When she gets better, she has these very same
delusions and has the energy to carry them out. You just have to make sure she
takes her medications and create on environment where she won't have access to
knives and other sharps.

Also, as depressed people get better, they have a tendency to "bad mouth" the
people closest and dearest to them. THIS WILL HAPPEN. Be prepared for this and
brief you children as your wife will say very hurtful things. Tell them and
yourself that this is the disease talking, not her. When she fully recovers,
your wife will have not remembered ever mouthing these words. I don't know why
this happens, it may be a phase of the delusions she goes throuh as she gets
better.

If your wife is non-compliant with her medications (the medical term is
"delinquent") do consider ECT. ECT has been hijacked by Hollywood and been
mystified. It is NOT what the man-in-the-street makes it out to be. The art and
science of ECT treatment has progressed much since the 1970s. It is safe. It
works for clinical depression. It is used for patients who are suicidical and
non-compliant with medications. Someone close to me had several sessions of ECT
and now is working perfectly well as a specialist paedodontic surgeon.

~*AZLAN*~

Hi
Thanks for sharing that with me.
My wife went manic early March. After 4 weeks I could
not cope and she was sent to hospital for 6 weeks, she
was on Hyperidon for a afew weeks then risperidon then
as well sodium valproate. She appeared to be OK then
last week she became very depressed and still is. She
has no energy and talks about dieing all the time.

Brian--- azlan038 <azlan038@...> wrote:
---------------------------------
Dear Folks!

I'm at the tail-end of a bipolar mixed episode. During
an episode, I
prefer not to post because, in retrospect, I usually
post rubbish.

I'm on 1000 mg of carbamazapine a day. This medication
is NOT FDA-
approved as a mood stabiliser but as anti-convulsant,
in the same way
sodium valproate isn't FDA-approved but is used
anyway.

I also take 10 mg of olanzapine (up from 5 mg) which
is an atypical
anti-psychotic. At this dose, this med causes
zombification - highly
sedative. Somnolesense - big word for making one
sleepy.

The third medication I'm on is clonazepam, which is of
the
benzodiazepine family. It is an anti-anxiolytic and
used for people
with general anxiety disorder and panic attacks. My
psychiatrist
(what the US calls psydoc) says its also used as an
adjunct to the
carmabazapine. I'm supposed to take 1.0 mg at
dinnertime. But I take
0.5 mg at dinner and another 0.5 mg about an hour
before I go to
sleep. This would stagger the side-effects in the
morning and I can
wake up at 6.45 am to catch a bus to work to be there
in time for
clock-in at 9.00 am.

At my last appointment, my clonazepam was lowered from
2 mg to 1 mg
but my olanzapine was upped from 5 mg to 10 mg. I
think my
psychiatrist wants to wean me off the clonazepam. I
see him next on
July 15 and I hope he lowers my olanzapine back to 5
mg as olanzapine
is a real bugger as far as side-effects go.

For those of you who live in Denmark, I have just
added a link
to "The Danish Mental Health Fund."

warm regards
~*AZ*~




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