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lostonearth35
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15 Jan 2010, 8:09 pm

I've had problems with anxiety and stuff all my life, but when I turned around 12 it seems I started to have all kinds of mental health problems that were like borderline OCD or even schizophrenia. I've had anxiety problems all my life but when I became a teen I started having all kinds of scary, intrusive thoughts and feelings I just couldn't explain. I remember sitting on my bed with my stuffed animals, getting dressed after a bath. Then I began staring at them and the way they started staring back made me extremely uncomfortable. Then I started having nightmarish thoughts that they were watching me, observing my doing doing such things and even reading my thoughts. And when I went to school I kept thinking they were coming to life. But they weren't all sweet and nice like the toys in Toy Strory. No, they would get drunk and smoke cigarrettes and if I read something "dirty" at school, like stuff in Health class, they would know. I knew that couldn't be true, they were no more alive than a pillow on my bed. But the thoughts wouldn't stop. It got so bad I started giving away my plushies and sometimes even destroyed them just to stop the anxiety. Finally I went to a child psychiactrist who put me on scizophrenia medication that made me have all kinds of side effects and I gained maybe 80 lbs. But by my mid-teens the thoughts left as mysteriously as they came. I know that women can suffer post-partum OCD or schizophrenia-like symptoms after having a child because their hormones are so screwed up. So could it also happen when you enter puberty? I don't even want to THINK about what'll happen when I start menopause! 8O



starygrrl
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15 Jan 2010, 10:36 pm

Alot of psychiatric conditions can onset at puberty. Bipolar, OCD, Depression, etc. My brother had an onset of bipolar when he hit puberty.



Aoi
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15 Jan 2010, 10:44 pm

True about psych conditions emerging during the teen years. Also, more conditions, such as bipolar 1 and OCD, are being recognized in younger people these days. It's not clear what role hormones play in this pattern, but they seem significant, directly or indirectly.

Medication choices and dosing for teens and younger is tricky, so as you get older, treatment options (and the likelihood that the treatment will work) generally improve.



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16 Jan 2010, 1:00 am

Puberty! Oh, God, never again. I was depressed from age 11 to age 22, but it got worse, way worse oiver the years and by the time I was 19 1/2 I needed treatment for it. I have improved a huge deal since I was 19.


If they had had the time to tell me more about the meds when I was in grade 9 or 10 I might have taken them (but not told anyone, because I would have found it embarrassing). But I didn't want the meds to let my guard down and be myself, because I wanted to keep a low profile there. Also, I felt they might impair or take away my ability to figure out the meaning of life and such. But when I finally started taking meds when I was 19 they made me MORE able to do the latter, and not care about the former (and as a result meet tons of friends). I wish I had accepted the meds they offered me at school. If I had known a little bit more, or just tried some to see how it worked.



MissConstrue
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16 Jan 2010, 12:25 pm

No but it can cause hormonal imbalance that is if your hormones are outta whack.

I have noticed that my autistic like traits weren't as noticeable until I started hitting puberty. That's when all the depression, anxiety, and social isolation began.

As a kid I can remember being more of the outgoing happy type before puberty hit. I'm sure for some who have a history of mental illness it may be more likely to progress once puberty hits. I doubt though that such a thing would be responsbile for the mental illness itself.


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Apple_in_my_Eye
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22 Jan 2010, 5:08 pm

I've heard that OCD (including intrusive thoughts) can occur (or worsen) at puberty, and then fade away as a person gets older. A lot of what you wrote is familiar, tho I never told anyone (thought it meant I was crazy and would be "put away" for sure) and was never medicated/treated. By the time I was about 19, though, it had all faded away pretty much completely. (it was things like feeling my thoughts were being 'broadcast', intrusive images about being cut, felt like every mirror everywhere was 2-way with cameras behind it, and other OCDish and schizzy stuff. I'm 41 now, and none of it has ever recurred, tho I am still a tiny bit OCDish). I think getting of the high school environment helped a lot -- major relief of stress. And puberty, too. Like others have said, the really bad depression started at that age, as well.


Oops, I just noticed this is the Women's forum -- I should mention that I'm male, so different puberty hormone involved in my case.



Brittany2907
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22 Jan 2010, 9:24 pm

Puberty doesn't cause mental illness but for families where mental illness is common, if you're going to get sick it's likely that some of the signs will appear some time during puberty, not necessarily straight at the beginning of it though.

I know that at 13 is when my problems started, similar problems to yours lostonearth35 - thinking things that obviously are not alive were communicating with me in some kind of psychic way, trying to get me to do things that I didn't want to do etc. & my depression started at 12 but got drastically worse at 13.


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09 Nov 2012, 2:40 am

MissConstrue wrote:
No but it can cause hormonal imbalance that is if your hormones are outta whack.

I have noticed that my autistic like traits weren't as noticeable until I started hitting puberty. That's when all the depression, anxiety, and social isolation began.

As a kid I can remember being more of the outgoing happy type before puberty hit. I'm sure for some who have a history of mental illness it may be more likely to progress once puberty hits. I doubt though that such a thing would be responsbile for the mental illness itself.


SNAP. I had the exact same experience.

I really was quite a happy child, with the odd bit of oddness. But just before 13 I had my first anxiety attack, and then my teenage years were a living nightmare.

All makes perfect sense now, looking back, doesn't it always.

I'm in my early 40s now, and I was only diagnosed about 2 or 3 years ago.
I honestly dont know how I made it this far.

To the OP: hang in there, its not puberty itself, its all the crap that goes with it - and remember, teenagers are the single most conservative age group you will ever come across. One trace of difference and it will be ostracized and attacked.



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09 Nov 2012, 10:54 am

For me things definitely got an awful lot worse from about 8 years old onwards, I would have benefitted massively from early diagnosis, as it is Asperger's wasn't really brought up until I was 24 even though I'd been first diagnosed with mental health problems at 15. I went from being a bright if anxious able child to being pretty much a recluse at the point I am now which is nearly 25.
Puberty is an awful time for everyone and there are a lot of things that go with it that are massively destabilising especially when you are on the spectrum. Increasing independance, a less formal routine, a lot of change in every area of life, increasing pressure and expectations etc all are even harder when you are on the spectrum. I know that less routine, pressure and NT expectations meant I basically went increasingly crazy as my teens went on, I became very volatile, extremely anxious and depressed and very withdrawn.
What I will say is for a number of reasons I have definitely started to calm down a bit, hormonal levels do not seem as overwhelming as they were, I feel I know myself for the first time since I was about 14 and I do feel I understand what is happening. Therapy helped me a lot,it's helped me to understand a lot of things someone without AS would have learnt from their peers. I don't have peers and a lot of the things I should be learning about at this point and over the last 10 years I am having to learn from other sources. The internet has been massively important as has reading. Weirdly, an awful lot of what I've learned I've learnt via fictional literature, television (things like Friends, Sex and the City, Frasier, Miranda and reality shows like The Osbournes, Laguna Beach, Newlyweds, Girls of the Playboy Mansion, The Hills and the Real Housewives...not great sources but better than nothing).
I think puberty is a really turbulant time for everyone but for some of us we definitely go a little (or very) crazy. i think it's because of the changes physically, socially, environmentally etc that we undergo but it hits us so much harder due to our pathology.
I'm just damn glad it's over now, I would NEVER want to go through my teenage years and I am truly amazed I got through it alive, no joke...I think at times it was not clear whether I would or whether I would die via misadventure or suicide. Whilst I would never want someone to experience what I went through, it is a relief to know that other people experienced similar things to me as at the time no one around me seemed to know that this wasn't a one off thing. However, there has been a lot of moments like that since I discovered Asperger's and Autism.