Depression Treatment Care

Question by Bob: Bipolar (manic depression) How do you handle the depressive rocketing out into mania?
My roommate has become a “Rocket Man” with manic behavior and I am stuck here with his mania. As I am bipolar myself, I am aware of the symptoms, but don’t know how to handle this guy.

Best answer:

Answer by burning for you
give him a smoke… and clean your room more often

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

please help!

A few months ago this guy added me as a contact after I answered one of his questions, and since we seemed to have a shared passion for music we kept asking and answering each others questions and eventually began to IM and email. He always seemed a bit odd, but harmless. Then he became really, really weird and told me that he wanted to drown himself like his favorite singer and that he was a member of this famous band and all this other stuff that totally freaked me out. I stopped writing to him for a few weeks and then he sent me a nice email and said I’d just misunderstood him and that he really wanted to stay in touch with me. So we started IM’ing again. Some weirdness happened, and he would freak out when I told him about fairly minor stuff – like typical teenage shenanigans and my insomnia and everything – and he asked for my dad’s email to snitch on me. I assumed he was just joking, and of course I didn’t give it to him. He would act really annoyed with me one day and then be like infatuated with me the next. I totally freaked out when he said he was going to come to LA when I turned 18, and that we were meant to be together and that he loved me. I seriously still thought he was joking though, cause that’s just crazy. He’s 30! Then yesterday he totally exploded at me. I made the mistake of letting him see my Photobucket album once, and he’s totally crushed on me ever since, but he’s 30 and I’m 17 so no way, no how, and last night when he made another pervy comment and I shot him down he became totally enraged and started writing that I was a racist discriminating against him (he’s Asian, I’m white). He said that my family belonged to the KKK and that we were the plague of humanity and needed to burn to death. He told me that racism dwelled within me, but that I was just a kid so I didn’t know it yet. Um, no, I’m totally NOT racist. The things he wrote were just horrible, and insane and really, really offensive and it was frightening and freaky. I hung up on him. Then before school this morning he wrote this totally breezy IM like nothing had happened and just laughed it off, and made fun of me for taking him seriously. He told me that he was a paranoid schizophrenic with manic depression and bipolar, and when I said that I was sorry, but that I thought I should send an email to the University where he is a Teaching Assistant to inform them of the situation because I was worried that if he was that capable of inflicting harm on me, this girl from the other side of the world and writing such verbal abuse, stalking me on all my sites, and everything that I worried about what he’d do to a girl in person, he said he wasn’t the guy he’d claimed to be all along. He told me previously that he was a philosophy grad student & TA and worked as a researcher at this bioethics company, and gave me his personal email for work, but I never used it cause I wanted to keep it really casual with him. He told me all these things about his childhood and family and work and school. And then this morning he said it was all a lie. He said that he had a social worker and was on house arrest (but yet, he’d just claimed to have fainted while at basketball practice that night) and that everything he’d ever written was a lie, and that it was all just a game of psychological chess but that I wasn’t a worthy opponent because I’m just a kid. When I told him that if that was the case then the social worker needed to know that he stole some guy’s identity and everything else that happened, and then he said that he was messed up because his sister died of acute schizophrenia in 2003. He’s never mentioned a sister before, and it felt more like a sympathy grab than the truth.

Even though I blocked him, he wrote to me from another IM tonight and said that it would be “hysterical” if I forwarded his IM’s to his local police as I said I was going to do and that I’d be responsible for getting “Matt” (the guy he’d previously claimed to be) killed cause they’d think he was a pedophile or something. It was so warped. He also said that I should just drop it cause if I didn’t he would make sure my parents knew about everything that happened and they would come down hard on me for be so naive and talking to a psycho like him and would take away my laptop. (Um, no, they’d be mad at him, not me, I think.) He said that we all wear masks and that I come across to the public as like the perfect teen but he’d “take the mask” off and show them my other side. (I have no major secrets, btw, just dumb randomness). He also said that he’d be so disappointed in my character if I did that because he never saw me as having a vindictive streak, and that all I wanted was revenge and to ruin his name. I’m not feeling vindictive, I just don’t want him to do this to another kid or pull a Virginia Tech shooting or something the knot in my stomach is telling me he may do.

I have no clue what to believe. Obviously, I’m not going to stay in touch,

This person is basically a great one, but from time to time explodes with very little reason. Depression is a big part of life, and is not easily overcome. Alcohol has been a problem from time to time, but self pity overrules all. I see a glimmer of hope occasionally, but when I suggest medical help, all blows. Then come the accusations, and darkness, self pity etc.

I posted a question on here the other day about my husband admitting himself into the mental health center. He was having manic spells that became uncontrollable. He was diagnosed with Manic Depression and was since released with medications and therapy appointments. The dr said the medication would not take full affect for up to 6 weeks. He’s very sad, worried, embarressed…every awful emotion the poor guy could face he has. How can I be a better support system for him? He was prescribed 100mg of Zoloft but is to only take 50mg for the first 7 days. What do I do if I notice an episode starting? He doesn’t get violent, just very upset and angry. He gets really bad racing thoughts and cannot control it. I want to be a strong person for him but I have no idea how to deal with it. We are looking into some marital counseling so that a professional could tell us how to deal with this as a family. But until then???

I got a screening from my school. They say I’m bipolar. My best friend is just like me from the things we like to do and say to our personalities. we are like brothers and I can trust his opinion. He has the same symtoms I have and he says it’s manic depression. I agree with him. My parents say theres nothing wrong with me but I would strongly disagree with them because I am insane. and I know so. My school says I should get therapy. everyone else says no therapy. I think I should just forget about therapy and life and everything and just not care about anything anymore.. Too much stress for me… for the past few days, friends and family seem like such a waste of my time. I need a few more opinions.
should I get therapy or should I not get therapy and rely on the natural therapy of good friends… even though some of the things they are doing are putting me under more stress than I ever had. it makes me wish I didn’t have friends some times.