calandale wrote:
Probably. I hate anti-depressents though, so I'd never get it dx'd.
As some others have said, not only are antidepressants typically not helpful for bipolar depression, they tend to amplify it. They tend to trigger mania or hypomania (sometimes even in people who didn't show those before), and this makes the mood cycling worse. In fact, my mom sometimes has credited the antidepressants I was prescribed in elementary school (particularly the SSRIs) for some of my tendency toward hypomania.
I would say that if I had to come up with the best official diagnosis for my mood swings, I would have to pick cyclothymia. The moods are not so extreme that I can't think straight, I don't have hallucinations, and the fraction of time I'm unusually depressed is about equal to the time I'm unusually elated or excited. Also, when they do happen, my mood swings can be quite rapid, with as little as an hour separating the "peaks" and "troughs" in the most extreme cases.
Like with EarthCalling, my moods are reactive to my environment. However, there's a substantial component that is intrinsic to my brain as well. A disappointment (such as finding out that a scientific hypothesis of mine was incorrect) may be shrugged off at a "high" point but make me really question my self-confidence at a "low" point. Conversely, an accomplishment or pleasant surprise will make me ecstatic at a "peak" but have little effect in a "trough". If I'm feeling neutral, sometimes a bad event can bring on a depressive phase and an exciting or funny event can bring on a hypomanic phase, and it's hard to tell where the normal mood ends and the "mood disorder" (if I have one) begins.
It's not really the magnitude of the mood swings that makes me think I may be a little bipolar, but it's how my mood can seem to change randomly, or get "stuck" up or down even after the triggering event is long over. That and the fact that I rarely feel calm/relaxed and happy together--I tend to be either calm, bored, and sad, or excited, wired, and euphoric. I don't know how much of this can be explained purely by Asperger's.
26 Apr 2007, 12:09 am
