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MindBlind
Veteran
Veteran

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Joined: 1 May 2009
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,341

04 Feb 2018, 4:59 pm

I haven’t seen or spoken to my dad in over a decade and I never got to know his family (partly because he cut ties with them for a while). I know they have a family history of substance abuse as well as domestic violence and child neglect. It’s not surprising that he had a bunch of mental problems after that but I’m still left with a lot of questions. I wasnt raised in that kind of environment and I wasn’t left to steal cabbages because my alcoholic, abusive parents wouldn’t feed me. I had a pretty good childhood and yet I have developed a lot of my dad’s moodiness.

I knew he was hospitalised as a young man and put on antipsychotics but it never occurred to me until recently that his volatile moods and instability could be genetic, not just environmental. He used drugs but mostly to help contain his mood swings, which makes me wonder if his parents were living with an undiagnosed mood disorder or something. It’s sort of a chicken and egg scenario.

Because I don’t know anything more than what I was told by my mum I’m concerned that I’m missing a vital piece of information to help understand the nature of my mental issues. I’m not getting much insight from my mum’s family history - at most there’s dementia and PTSD (my grandad’s brother died in the 70’s and that traumatised him). Has anyone ever had discrepancies in their family history and how has it affected treatment or diagnosis?