I’m a 15 year old male living in England. I’ve suffered from trauma throughout my life due to my dad’s manic episodes. His last episode was his most severe one so far. It’s costed me my sanity. This is an account not a summary.
I was stuck in my house for 3 months not being about to get out or talk to anybody outside. If my mom would try to call the police or mental health services my dad would threaten to slit her throat with a bread knife.
He would verbally and psychologically abuse her, sometimes coming downstairs naked to get some food late at night while my mom was in the living room. He would tell her that his life full of scars and shit (his first wife died of cancer while he was in an institution, he second wife left him while he was doing a stage production overbroad during a past manic episode)
When my mom first met him they fell in love, 3 years later he had another manic episode and she first discovered that he had manic-depression. 6 years after that I was born. He still had manic episodes. I remember was I was 2 I was happy until there was a time when my dad started to play loud music again and argue with my mum, I had fits of anger and rage combined with nightmares and crying. I couldn’t remember which dreams were real which were not. I really felt happy when I was a kid. I didn’t feel I was in the same world as everybody else. I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when I was 6. When I was 10 my dad had another big manic episode. I threatened to kill myself. I was told for the first time that my dad had manic depression. It makes sense because my dad’s family were relatives of Ernest Hemmingway who was suspected to have had manic depression.
Two summers when my family went on holiday to stay with some relatives abroad, my dad had another manic episode. My mom spent the rest of the week planning for us to go home in advance. Once we got back my dad’s psychiatrist was on holiday, and when he came for an evaluation at the house my dad fooled him by appearing well and trying to make it look like my mom was the one who was crazy. He started shouting at the mental health team every time they mentioned residential care or institution. This is because in the 70s he was locked up in a psychiatric asylum and beaten by nurses while being pumped full of lithium carbonate, which dulled his mind and destroyed his acting career. This is the reason why he hasn’t taken any medication since. But he did start to take Olanzapine, which didn’t improve his episode.
During the 3 months of the episode he tried to organise a concert with Paul McCartney, which he has done in every single manic episode before. My mum became crazy and I had to become the man of the house, I had fights with my dad, my dad experienced psychosis. I started to experience psychosis myself; I attempted to kill my dad. I started to make a hit list of all of the people I planed to kill at school. I planned to become a commander of my school; organising a mafia like consortium.
When it came to September and I had to go back to school, my dad’s manic episode started to get better. But in order to drive me to school he had to stop taking the Olanzapine, which caused his episode to get even worse than before. He started to go back into psychosis and full blown megalomania. He believed he was a genius and started walking down the local market shouting at people and telling them that the world is corrupt and decadent.
When I had to go back to school I started to hear voices. They were telling me to kill certain people in my class. They were also telling me that I am worthless and weak. The old version of me was weak and pathetic. I had to replace him the new superior superhuman version that will bring justice and security to everybody around him. Around that time after a fight with my dad I threw my fist through a glass door, causing severe injuries resulting in me being sent to hospital When I waiting in the hospital with many other people, I started to believe they were analysing AND reading my mind by looking subtle hints from my body language. I kept to places around where there weren’t many people. And if there were I would either shout at them or run away.
One time two months after the trauma, I got up in the middle of the night and went downstairs to the living room. I believed that I was a Roman Emperor giving a political speech to senators of the opposition in an auditorium in Rome. It ended up with me beating the cushions crying and shouting, and my mom coming downstairs to calm me down.
I stopped going to school that autumn. The voices stopped. The megalomania stopped. The flashbacks and memories of the trauma stopped. I started to isolate myself in my own room with just myself and my computer. My only connection I had to the outside world. I had to internalise myself and in my head I created the new far more powerful version of me. There were several personalities in my head: the megalomaniac, the hero, the crazy feral kid, and a few others….
The January of the next year, I was ordered a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist by the local government. The psychiatrist prescribed me Seroquel an atypical antipsychotic. I refused to take it because I didn’t want to be sedated. 3 months later I had physical aches and I started to believe I had a brain tumour. I became depressed and thought about suicide. My dad said he was overwrought of how badly the episode messed my mind up, that decided to take a chronic mood stabiliser to never let this happen again. My psychiatrist came again in May, evaluated me again and diagnosed me with depression. She prescribed me Prozac, it improved my depression, but it didn’t make me any happier. I became irritable and aggressive and started hallucinating and experienced paranoia on 20mg, it was moved down to 10mg and I started to fell better. Eventually that August I started intense weight training and running and that helped me a lot more than Prozac. Gradually I started to go outside again, and feel normal outside without getting vertigo. After that I started better being around other people.
For some reason I started to experience mania and psychosis again, probably due to the Prozac, even though I hadn’t changed the dosage. The drug started to become less effective though time. I went back to school in September, even though I haven’t managed to stay there consistently, my psychiatrist hasn’t done anything about I stop going in November. Hopefully I can get back this January when school starts.
Anther thing I wanna say is that my dad’s a great guy for almost all of the time, even though I argue with him sometimes and the fact that he has mood swings and short depressive episodes, he only has a manic episode every 2-4 years only in the summer. And hopefully now he’s taking meds he won’t have anther one for a while.
What I’d like you guys to do is tell me what I should do right here right now, remembering that the UK has a stupid universal healthcare system. Sure it’s for everybody but that doesn’t mean its any good. I’m not psychotic, depressive or manic right now, I’m feeling normal. I’m also planning to move to America in my late teens.
I don’t want you to diagnose me; I just want you to suggest what disorder/s I might have. This is very important for me; I’ve been spending a lot of time researching mental illnesses to find the right one.
I’ve realised that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and that’s what I know these experiences have done for me.
