BPD with Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis

[AcheyMom]

Are there any parents here that have an adult child with both BPD and Bipolar Disorder?  Anyone’s child been hospitalized?  My 33 yr old has both and has been hospitalized several times.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Sancho]

Hi AcheyMom
My dd has BPD and I have a long - time friend with Bipolar. I can easily see the features of both in these people I know well.

I suppose I am wondering how the features can be recognised/distinguished in your child. Were the hospitalisations due to the same crisis - or different each time?

I wonder really how you cope with the range of symptoms presented by both these conditions - it must be extremely difficult for you and my heart goes out to you in your supporting your child.

[BPDMOM28]

My daughter was hospitalized when she was 17, and was in their residential program for 7 mos. She has several diagnosis's but I feel like the BPD is just an umbrella diagnosis bc she has several other diagnosis's. The hospital this was hell bc she was a minor and I could have her released if I wanted to but I wanted her to complete the program, bc she never took any other facilities seriously bc the insurance would stop paying and I would have to bring her home, and she knew it would happen, so she just waited. When she was in the last program she was made to complete the program or not be released unless I was to remove her, so she kept crying to my and making promises, making it so hard to say no, but she did complete it, and was a whole different child for a while, but then fell back into old habits later.

[Sammy Jo]

My 21-year-old DD has a diagnosis of Bipolar and BPD and ADHD. When she was a minor she was hospitalized for 4-5 weeks on two occasions in a residential facility and did outpatient DBT therapy. During her senior year in high school, she spent five months at a facility in Nashville that is voluntary and Christian-based. She was a completely different person after coming back home for about six months and then completely shifted back to how she acts now. I've heard so many people say that therapy won't work until the pwBPD chooses it.

In terms of the differences, I think the sadness (low) of Bipolar is more of the difference I see, "Why was I born, I just want to be at peace, etc." The manic side of Bipolar is just swept away in the chaos of the BPD. Our long-time psychiatrist has always said when we used to ask about having yet another psych eval, "It doesn't always matter what the diagnosis is, but rather what treatment helps." And he's right. So many of these issues share similar traits and most are treated by the same drugs. However, Bipolar was diagnosed in her at a very young age and for a long time, the meds helped. BPD reared its ugly head later and I honestly feel that medication is not helping with it at all.

Good luck with your daughter. It's so hard at 17 b/c she's college-age and at a point where you really do want to help steer her life to the right side.

I did learn something from AT&T that helped me over the past two weeks since we pulled DD out of college for this semester for instability. They can turn her phone off and then back on whenever I call them since she is one of the phones on our plan. She doesn't like that at all and I have a password with my account that I have to provide them when I call. I have used this tactic twice. Score one for Mom!