Mental Health Q & A: Early Signs of Bipolar

The following question is specific to me, but it may also be helpful  to recognize signs of mental illness or mental health difficulties in a loved one.

Did you have warning signs of mental illness before your diagnosis of bipolar one?

The short answer to this question is: "yes, but." There were numerous signs of a mental illness before I was officially diagnosed at age 19, including a hospitalization at age 15 and a hypomanic episode at age 18. The "but" of this answer is that these signs were mainly in retrospect. All the signs I'll list below come with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps I could have been better prepared if I had been working with a mental healthcare provider, and knowing these signs now, as a parent, I hope to be more proactive with my child's mental health.

 While I experienced signs of mental illness, a hard bipolar I diagnosis doesn't come until there is a full-blown manic episode. I definitely had bipolar-like symptoms in my teens, but I didn't have a major manic episode until the fall of my sophomore year of college.

Many of the signs of bipolar were present throughout my middle and high school years. The biggest thing I can always point back to is poor sleep and/or decreased need for sleep. Before high school, staying up late and listening to the radio or reading seemed completely normal. I functioned fine on less sleep than would be considered normal, and never worried about it too much.

In high school, sleep did become an issue. Partly it was due to the fact that I worried I should be getting more sleep, and that worry actually made it harder to fall asleep. Anxiety in general also made falling asleep more difficult, and right around age 30 I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.

Symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder have been around since I was a child, and even when I'm doing well they still affect me. As a child I tended to worry a lot, and much of my worry would be about things I had no control over. The excessive worry and its detrimental effects on my life were big red flags of potential mental illness.

It's surprising to me that it took until I was 30 to receive a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder, but the reason why it took so long is probably the fact that anxiety is also one of the symptoms of bipolar. I've gone through around a dozen bipolar cycles at this point, and in many of those cycles anxiety has been one of the symptoms.

However, after being evaluated by a psychologist, it became clear to me that my anxiety is always hanging around, and it's something to manage beyond the cycles of bipolar.

I hope this information is helpful. This is the last of the questions I've received about mental illness, but if you have another question, feel free to comment, message me, or send me an email at: leckbann@gmail.com.