First the good news, I'm continuing to do well after my knee surgery. It's been six weeks, and I'm walking around well, driving, off the pain medications, and working on regaining stamina for normal activities. I just made it through a whole weekend with family and some stress around the big storms we've had in the midwest. We've not flooded but many people are struggling with it, and our basement sump pump is running at an alarming rate.
I FINALLY had the call with PSI to resume the training to become a peer mentor for women in the US struggling with postpartum psychosis and perinatal issues. I had started this in 2023 and then never finished it because of all the medical issues I had last year. It looks like I have some more medical hurdles to overcome this year too, but I still want to contribute in what ways I can. Anyway, I'm watching these videos today and they were talking about the different mental health disorders in the perinatal period and what the hallmarks of them are. This video is just an overview, but they said something that interested me.
It was the slide about Bipolar Disorder. It said that 50% of women are diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder for the first time during the perinatal period (pregnancy or postpartum.) Then it said that 60% of women initially present as depressed postpartum, and if prescribed an antidepressant without a mood stabilizer, they are at risk of cycling into mania. This is precisely what happened to me. I had a history of cycles of depression before my pregnancies, but not mania. I had taken antidepressants before and never become manic. After my second child, I became depressed within a couple weeks of the birth, and it was my OB/GYN who prescribed me an antidepressant, because I didn't have a psychiatrist. I took that antidepressant for about two weeks, and when it wasn't working, he upped the dose. At that point it threw me into a mania (which I did not normally experience), and the mania threw me into psychosis. The mania went away and the depression returned, but the psychosis stayed with it. I continued to struggle with psychosis for many months, but it was at a level that I could reasonably mask from others. I didn't tell anyone else that I was hearing voices, paranoid and having delusions, and I was able to publicly hide it. My husband and people close to me knew I was struggling, but didn't understand what was happening and neither did I. When my baby quit nursing at 10 months old, within 36 hours I had a complete psychotic break to the point that it could no longer be hidden or denied, I could no longer function, and I was hospitalized at that point. I know what the sequence of this was because I kept a journal at the time, and I still have it.
My question for those who might know - what would you call this? Perinatal bipolar disorder with psychosis? Ironically, I am no longer considered to have bipolar disorder, because I don't suffer from mania. I've had depression and anxiety, but not mania - and that episode with the antidepressant is the only time I can recall having something like mania. I suppose it doesn't really matter, except that I'm working on this memoir and I'd like to understand it, or know what to call it. They did originally diagnose me with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, but I've been told by multiple doctors that they do not believe I have bipolar, and I don't think it's something that just disappears.
Does this make me ineligible to be on this page? One thing is for sure, I definitely had that psychosis, and for a very long time. The onset might not have been the same as other people, but it was sure there, I can guarantee that. I really don't identify much with the bipolar crowd, because I don't suffer from mood swings or mania.
Getting my head round this.
long term outcomes anxiety
Midwife dumped me
PP to Bipolar
