I was a mentally ill young person - AMA

[MadeItOutTheOtherSide]

Namechanged as probably can’t answer honestly without outing myself. I’m sure there must be lots of mums here coping with teenage children struggling with mental illness, so wonder if this might be helpful or illuminating.

I’m now a (mostly) happy, and happily married mum of 2 in my mid 30s, but from my early teens to early 20s I lived with severe mental illness, including self harm, depression, anxiety, hypomania and paranoid delusions in various forms. I received diagnoses of Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder at different points, though I haven’t met the diagnostic criteria for either in many years and it’s generally agreed they were wrong. I had (I think) 5 inpatient admissions to adolescent psychiatric units, the longest being 5 months. I was discharged from adult psychiatric services at 25/26 (my memory is a bit addled)

Happy to answer questions 🙂

Did you have an abusive childhood?

What changed?

My daughter is currently sectioned and has been for 4 months. Diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. She has selective mutism. Were you ever that severe and how long did it take you to get better? I guess I'm looking for a bit of hope.

No not at all, I had a very happy stable childhood.

A big question that’s hard to answer. It was sort of slowly and then suddenly, I was last very unwell at 24, then changed psychiatrists to one who actually took me off all the meds and agreed I wasn’t bipolar, which changed my perspective. I started to work on some symptoms more like they were learned behaviours than out of control illness and managed to stop self harming too (which I treat like an addiction - like you always have the addiction you’re just in remission) and I think there was an element of my brain just maturing and learning better coping mechanisms. There was no specific thing that cured me.

Sorry to hear about your daughter, I hope you’re being supported? I guess I was that bad. I was never sectioned though I came close, I was always somehow convinced to go in voluntarily for which I’m grateful. My illness started just before I turned 13, and was very up and down for about the next 11 years, with periods of illness and wellness throughout that. I would say I was ‘well’ by 25, though that’s quite simplistic. There is always hope, I have friends I met in hospital who were all seriously unwell and all now living their lives. I hope your daughter gets the help she needs and improves soon, getting help young is a huge indicator of future recovery.

Was there a trigger for your mental illness or did it apparently come from nowhere?

From the best of my memory it just came out of nowhere, but I’d always been a ‘quirky’ child I guess. There was no particular trigger, like a bereavement or change

Thank you for posting. My dd is slowly on the up but I feel like I’m holding my breath waiting for the next relapse. At one point I thought she was either going to die or simply have to stay with me forever so I could keep her alive

I’m sure my mum felt the same for a long time. When you’re the one in it you can only really see your own pain, but with the perspective of time I can see how much she suffered, especially now I’m a mum too. She was always brilliantly open and supportive though, I could go to her with anything, and I’m sure that was a factor in my recovery. I hope your daughter keeps going upwards.

In what ways were you quirky? Would you say you are still quirky now?

Thank you for posting op.
When you were going through the tough times what helped to get you through? X

I'm a mum in similar circumstances - I think this thread will draw us in like moths round a flame of hope (sorry bit clichéd!) My DD20 has been ill since she was 14 (that we know of) and is almost entirely housebound - she has OCD and body dysmorphia. I've been told that young people cannot be that ill and make a reasonable recovery, and that they also grieve for the years they lost - which my DD certainly does, and she's still losing years. Clearly you have made a good life for yourself, but did you feel like that OP? that you'd been cheated of your younger life?

Sometimes I think Cahms and medication made things worse. Do you think the interventions you had helped ?

A big precocious, a bit opinionated, all school reports say things like ‘MadeItOutTheOtherSide is such a character’. I’ve definitely mellowed with age though!

A really supportive and non-judgmental mum, there were periods of promiscuity and alcohol and substance misuse alongside the self harm, but I didn’t feel like I had to hide all the pain. I didn’t tell her EVERYTHING of course, but she was always a safe place to land. I didn’t want to cause her and my family more pain.

I had a few good friends who stuck by me despite me often being awful, and actually a teenage boyfriend was also a particularly secure base. Our relationship was definitely ahead of our age.

And also, I guess most of the time I managed to keep some hope that things could be different. Not always, I made a few attempts on my life, but mostly I was prevented by not wanting to hurt others and a hope that things would be better one day. Sometimes it was a case of just getting through the next 5 minutes, and then the next 5 minutes

Have you considered whether it may be undiagnosed neurodiversity instead? A life time without the necessary accommodations and understanding?

So sorry you’re going through this, that’s awful someone’s said that to you, it’s not true at all. She may have some struggles forever, but there’s no reason she can’t recover and live a happy life. I have friends from hospital (and you have to be pretty bloody ill in this country to get an adolescent psych bed, there are so few and they are so expensive) who are now lawyers, researchers, nurses, have families, even PhDs… I left school without taking a single GCSE and I now have a Masters and professional qualification in my field. I hope she and you can keep some hope, and access the help she needs.

Do I grieve for the lost years? It’s an interesting question. Thanks to being on some very heavy medication whilst my brain was still developing, plus also I think some trauma response to being ill like that for so long, my memory of it all is a bit shit. I know what happened, but real visceral memory of it isn’t there. I’m sort of thankful for this, and it’s had the result of making me live more in the now and not dwell on the past.

But at the same time, yes I feel I bit cheated. I missed 2/3rd of my secondary education. I didn’t go to uni with my peers. I’ve had to claw my way up to try and equalise. I’m still behind in many ways - like we haven’t bought a house as I didn’t start working till so much later than others. I was much less established in my career when I had my kids than I would have liked. I didn’t have a normal teenage experience at all and that’s sad. But I also have a resilience that perhaps others don’t have. I’m a big believer in the butterfly affect, and with a different life I wouldn’t have my DH or my children and I wouldn’t change that.

It’s so hard to know. At points those interventions literally kept me alive, so they definitely helped. I had CBT at 16 and that was hugely helpful, I know it’s often dismissed but as a chronic over thinker I’ve never stopped using those strategies. But on the whole I remember very little ‘therapy’, inpatient admissions seemed to be more containment than treatment. As I was labelled from 13-22 with a chemical imbalance it’s seems a bit like the only option considered was medication. Like there wasn’t much point trying to do behaviour change. When that diagnosis was dismissed that changed.

With medication, I can never know how I would have been without it, I was on lithium for 10 years, quetiapine for 8, plus other things sprinkled in, it’s heavy duty stuff. It made me very drowsy. But it did also settle me from a lot of ups and down. Now I think it was probably undiagnosed ADHD, if that had been spotted I’m sure it would have been different. I started to recover when I came off all the medication and started seeing my issues as possibly within my control (they weren’t entirely of course, but it was a mindset shift)

Experiences of CAMHS vary wildly. I think I came off quite well, but I have friends who really didn’t. I think they help most when they’re treating the right thing. They’re often too stretched to look further than the obvious though.

Sorry that’s a bit of a ramble

Oh 100%. I’ve identified as ‘neurodiverse misc’ for a while now. I almost certainly have ADHD, but some aspects of that I think don’t look quite right for a diagnosis because of coping mechanisms I built due to my early experiences. I don’t think I’m Autistic, but I do have some traits. I have hospital friends with similar histories now getting ASD diagnoses in their 30s. Due to my history of misdiagnoses I’m not looking to pursue any new ones at this time, but starting to look at some of ongoing niggles through that lens is helping.

I Don't want to hijack so will make this short and sweet but my ds1 who is now 26 spent from 13-16 in a forensic setting sectioned.
He has a diagnosis of asd and schizophrenia. He went to university and now works full time.
It's not been without it's trials and tribulations but he is well. And for a long time I never thought that would be the case.
Sending love to you all.

Fantastic to hear things have worked out so well. Questions:

1. Did you feel like an outsider at primary school? Were you ever bullied?
2. Are/were you conventionally attractive?
3. Were your parents liberal? If you had siblings, how did it impact?
4. What’s your relationship with your Mum like now? Do you parent in a similar way?
5. What could your Mum have done better? Could anything have changed your tracjectory.
6. They say BDP is not curable & outcomes poor - do you agree?

Thanks

Unusual. I’ve worked extensively in MH for years. (I am now a clin psych). I have family members who have been admitted numerous times with diagnoses ranging from schizophrenia, personality disorder to bipolar. All had abusive childhoods. So lots of clinical and lived experiences here.

I’ve often worked with adults who have claimed to have had “lovely, stable childhoods” but upon extensive psychotherapy, not so. Usually these individuals were from very, very middle class homes whereby one parent gave the “illusion” of being a very good parent. They weren’t hit and were fully provided for but the abuse was covert and often in my opinion more damaging and confusing for a young person to “work out” so to speak.

I am not invalidating your experience at all, but the large majority (really quite overwhelming actually) would have had unusual childhoods to present so severely.

I have came across one individual who didn’t have a problematic childhood but was quite frankly a genius and suffered hugely with existential angst which was most probably correlated with her autism.

@SparklingMarkling interesting, an absent parent or ‘boarding school syndrome’ ‘enough’ to ‘cause’, even if all else generally very genuinely positive?

@Peverellshire

I mean it’s all very variable really. I do raise an eyebrow internally though when someone with very severe symptoms claims to have had a “lovely and stable childhood” but I am a psychologist and not a psychiatrist. I simply don’t believe severe mental illness “presents itself” out of the blue like that of a biological disease would.