MIL tells me DHs “secret” what should I do?

[somewhatavoidant]

My DH has bipolar and has been in an elevated state since early March. It has been a difficult time although he has seemed calmer in the last week and I’ve started to relax thinking the hypomanic episode was over. We are visiting MIL with our 8yr old DS. Yesterday she said that DH had told her he stopped taking his medication 2 months ago. This would explain the recent episode. She has begged me not to tell him she told me. I’m trying to think of a way around it as I don’t want to cause trouble between them. However, deciding to stop taking his meds (and obviously he is free to make that decision) is a huge thing that should have been discussed between us as his MH issues affect our family deeply. AIBU to betray MiLs trust?

What is it about MH and a refusal to take meds on a regular basis? I hear this so often.. people are fine and happy on their meds and they arbitrarily decide to stop them. Why? These are intelligent people who seemingly understand that their well-being is dependent on those meds and yet they will do it time and again.

There has been a study on this. I was surprised as I thought it would have been the side-effects.

mentalillnesspolicy.org/medical/medication-noncompliance.html

Does your DH not have his bloods done?

It's not standard with bipolar anymore, because Lithium isn't a standard medication anymore. Unless he's taking that, blood tests wouldn't show much.

OP, if you want to raise the conversation without upsetting MIL, can you tell him you've noticed there are too many tablets left in his packet?

I hope he makes the right decision here.

My DS is on a daily injection and medication orally for a physical condition and has done so since he was 3. He would get ill if he didn’t take these every day. It’s no different to someone requiring medication to maintain good mental health. Prolonged periods of being mentally unwell can have a massive affect on your health as your sleep is affected, mood is affected and physical health. I have known people with bipolar who killed themselves when they came out of their heightened mood and plummeted into depression. This illness is not something to play with.Sadly this is not unusual with people from suffering with mental health when they recover to simply stop medication. It’s the main reason for relapse and admission to hospital ..... I would be speaking to your DH and it really doesn’t matter that his MIL told you this is to serious to ignore

Actually he shouldn’t be “free to make that decision “ why do people think it’s okay to let bipolar people suffer because by not insisting on medication?

You see, there's this thing called human rights, which means forced medicating of somebody with mental capacity is abuse and unlawful.

People with mental illness are still full humans with the same rights as everyone else. Including the right to make decisions other people might not agree with or consider wise.

AnchorDownDeepBreath that is really interesting as my bf has hers done regularly along with her other family member with bipolar. She is on a few meds however, so I wonder if it is the combination they check then.

What is it about MH?

There's embarrassment, there's side effects, there's the illness itself telling them that they aren't well, there's society treating it as something to be ashamed of/being a lesser/weaker person - and that hypomania feels really good (right up until it doesn't).

Most of us have a time where we feel on top form, thinking clearly, being 'smart', everything is easy and we're happy. Can you imagine feeling like that and being told it's wrong and you have to take pills to stop feeling like it? That 'normal' is feeling flat, sleepy, tired and achy, not having the answers or good ideas, not being able to think clearly, feeling fat and bloated (weight gain is a common side effect) and essentially, not being happy?

The danger with bipolar treatment is that it takes out the awful lows, but it also takes out the highs. Yes, when it goes into full mania or psychosis, that has to be stopped, but the medication doesn't always just take that away - it takes away everything, sexual desire and response, no enjoyment of music (some meds can distort pitch perception to a good semitone, so this is a disaster for somebody who is a musician, for example) or art, hand tremors can take away the ability to draw, write or repair things as part of a job, they can lose all pleasurable sensations, sometimes all sensation beyond pain.

That's why non compliance is so common in bipolar. Feeling like shit in comparison to unmedicated is supposedly how the person is supposed to feel.

I hear this so often.. people are fine and happy on their meds and they arbitrarily decide to stop them. Why?

In lots of cases, because they're not actually fine and happy on those meds!

Psych meds aren't magic drugs that take away symptoms to cure someone, for the most part they just sedate you and suppress symptoms by virtue of that sedation - but also make you feel like a zombie and make it difficult to feel part of the world or that your life is meaningful.

Psych meds are not equivalent to insulin for diabetes or antibiotics for a UTI, for example.

Some people find them helpful and are prepared to tolerate all the down sides, some people find them helpful but not enough to justify the side effects, and some people just find them damaging.

Even for those people in the first category, some still make the choice that they want to use other methods of managing their symptoms or improving them.

For lots of people, their symptoms arise from underlying trauma. If that's the case and all you've received is medication that sedated you to make you seem acceptable on the outside, but doesn't stop your trauma from eating you up on the inside, would you really view that medication as helpful?

Or would you want to explore ways to address the trauma/underlying cause of your symptoms (it's not all "chemical imbalance")? Would you want to find ways to feel part of the world or would you want to exist in a fog? Would you want to feel like "you" and be able to hear your own thoughts clearly, or would you want to feel like a zombie?

A few legal caveats apply, but for the most part people are free and should be free to make the choices that are right for them about medication.

Great posts on why people stop taking meds. Worth remembering also that when in the grips of the illness it is possible to think that there are conspiracies - my friend thought God was speaking to her and telling her not to take the meds; only she could hear him and it was a miracle.

If you are religious and believe in a God then this can be a confusing one to explain - who do you trust?

My mum is bipolar and I've cared for her through a lot of highs and lows. She has stopped taking her meds three times and each time ended up manic. The side effects from her tablets are horrific and she thought she could get off them herself.

I think you need to tell DH you've noticed he isn't taking them and tell his cpn/GP as soon as you can to avoid it escalating. He might not be making thought out or clear decisions just now and if he isn't sleeping well it could spell disaster.

Horrible illness OP I wish you both the best x

People with mental health issues have the same rights as anyone else to start or stop medication. For some it’s side effects and some of them are quite bad side effects, for others it’s denial that thy really have the condition, so when they start to feel better they think thy don’t need them anymore. Some people are ashamed of the condition. There are many reasons people come off medication, Kanye West is a good example of this, he stops taking his meds because he feels that they blunt his creativity. This is very common with creative people they feel they are at their best unmediated, eventually they do spiral because the high with bi polar is followed with a completely manic episode or severe depressive episode.

Please remember that our social norm suggests that people with mental health conditions need to be ‘fixed’ to be ‘normal’. Where in other countries their social norms are very different. Some one getting on a plane with what is considered here to be a mental health problem
May get off a plane in a different country and be considered completely normal.

To suggest that it is abuse to not medicate people would be abuse in itself, we moved away from mass institutional medical coshing a very long time ago now. To insist that someone is medicated against their will? So how would that work in a non mental health setting, would you also insist that other kinds of conditions be considered the same? There are plenty of people who don’t take all their anti biotics for infections which come back twice as bad and cost the NHS a fortune in extra treatments, people who don’t manage their diabetes properly and end up losing limbs, should they all be forced to take medication when they don’t want to?

With serious mental health conditions like bi polar, schizophrenia etc this is how they were made, it may not have been evident at birth but they have always had the genetic predisposition towards those conditions so the unmedicated version of the self is their normal and they may like that.

Drugs have side effects. If you have insight you weigh up the risks & side effects. If not you may not recognise the benefits or need for meds. Being high can be great but left unchecked can lead to forced hospitalisation. Tell his care team, ask for crisis assessment. Tell him take your meds or leave.

I was on anti depressants, they caused me really bad side effects, so stopped taking them, went back to the doctors and changed my meds, was good for 2 months, then ended up in hospital for over a week with a pancreatitis, it was my knew anti depressants that caused it, I haven't been back on them since

Shocked by some of the posters. Anyone who thinks that medication for illnesses such as bit polar and schziphrena ( sp) is something akin to headache tablets have never had to deal with a person with such an illnesz. It us not an unresolved trsima it's a chronic health condition that needs medication.

the unmedicated version of the self is their normal and they may like that.
The problem with this though is that they are not their normal self when having an episode. Someone who is bipolar who is constantly haunted by paranoia and who hasn't slept or eaten in a week may still enjoy the elated feeling of being high, but they aren't thinking straight and are not themselves at all. They often do and say things completely outside their characteristics and go onto deeply regret or feel shame.

Where would this stop? If someone who is mentally unwell wants to commit suicide because a voice in their head has told them to and that person is fine with that, should they just be ignored and left to die because they are being themselves?

I was on anti-depressants and stopped taking them. I didn't feel they were making any difference to me at all. I felt I could manage my (mild) depression better with self-help, exercise and making lifestyle changes.

The side effects of insomnia, jaw clenching pain and chronically dry mouth were awful.

Does your dh generally have insight into his condition?
Does he have insight now?

Can you talk to him about bipolar and the effect its different phases ve him, on you, in general?

If you were to have that conversation, would it make him think about whether it is fair on you to stop taking his meds? Do you think he might feel shame at subjecting you to those problems and him quietly start takig them again?

By not insisting he take medication you are ensuring he can’t lead a normal life. Baffles me why people have this belief. I think it is abuse to not medicate people

Blaming OP for that is absolutely appalling. Her DH made the decision to stop taking his meds, not OP. In fact, if it wasn't for her MIL, OP still wouldn't know!

Forcing meds is dodgy moral ground.

I take meds for MH, not bi polar, but I very much need to take them or would get very ill, very quickly. I have a responsibility to my family to take them, that's my view on it. It is not DPs fault, nor the children's fault if I don't take them.

Nobody has suggested this to me, it's my own though process.

Having a MH condition doesn't mean you are absolved from being part of your own family, nor does it mean you have the right to put them at risk of difficult times because you're choosing not to take your meds. He obviously knows enough to lie to medics and his wife, so he's able to conceal what he's doing. Which means he knows it's wrong.

Bad situation all round what a terrible position for mil be in It must of taken a lot for her to do this and she will feel guilty for not telling you earlier and guilt for breaking his trust.
go with him to appt and say you don't think med levels are right and take it from there
can you get message to doctor b4 you go to say he's not taking them.
Try to avoid dropping mil it could damage there relationship .

My friend has this ..she’s not always on medication,sometimes they have her on lithium and a an antidepressant,but sometimes nothing.she seems to cope sometimes with out anything

I totally agree with @InTheHeatOfLisbon ... and for her - what a great post.

OP - If your DH has capacity to decide that he can stop taking his medication, then he has capacity to understand that this will have a horrible negative impact on the rest of his family, which is a selfish and unkind thing to do, frankly.

YANBU to betray MIL's trust, no, as you are acting in the best interests of your DH and the rest of your family. Having supported my own DH through many bouts of mental ill-health I know only too well the toll this can take on the sufferer's loved ones, and in fact we have a deal now - he has to take the meds or our marriage is over. It is totally his choice, but I cannot stay with someone with his condition when it's unmedicated as it is too stressful, unpleasant and downright dangerous tbh. I know this may sound harsh, but believe me the hell he has put us through when off the meds cannot be described. (And conversely, I've raved about him on the "nice husbands" thread recently, because he is the best man I will ever meet, when his bloody unfair brain chemistry imbalance isn't allowed to f*ck him up).

What meds is he on? For example I’m on lithium so need regular bloods done, which if I wasn’t taking my meds would show easily.

Seriously though you need to be up front ‘oi twat, you haven’t been taking your meds, I can tell, so don’t lie to me, but tell me why you haven’t?!’. Don’t pussy foot around. He knows he’d needs to take his meds, and he knows why he needs to take his meds. He also knows that if he doesn’t he’ll get hypomanic or manic. I religiously do take them, so far, have taken my meds every day. I’ve still been hypomanic for the last 1 1/2-2 months, but I know if I didn’t taken them there would be a greater chance of me being manic. (But judging that I’ve just slept approx 18 hours I may be coming back down).

Being biplar is a bitch, but a great part of being well, is being supported by those around you. So they can help pin point those small changes in mood, they can tell when your speech is beginning to get more erratic and not making sense, they can tell when the numerous ideas we have that flow one after another start spewing out and so on. When those supporting us can see it, when we can not see it ourselves.

But that means that we have to trust and believe those supporting us. There is so much we can not control, but what we can control is taking our medication as prescribed. The biggest reason for not taking it, is believing we are well enough without it- normally during a hypomanic or manic episode! Just be upfront and honest!

It’s hard to say without knowing the full story.
But my friends incredibly easy going kindly husband was diagnosed with bi- polar after a manic episode.
He came off his meds twice, one just due to an error which led to a manic episode which they recognised and he was medicated again.
Second time he decided he hated the medication. This time he became extremely paranoid, manic and violent and friend was lucky not to have been seriously injured or killed. He was sectioned. They ended up divorced as he couldn’t be trusted to take the meds and has been intermittently sectioned over the years.
From what she was told was every episode of not being medicated the symptoms would escalate so she knew she had to prioritise her children’s safety.

MrsSpenserGregson thank you

I’m not bipolar, but I have PTSD and I’m on anti-depressants. This medication takes away the crushing pain and the distressing memories of my childhood SA. But at the same time, it prevents me from feeling positive emotions as well, which means that I can’t feel the joys of life with a loving DH and 2 lovely DDs. My emotions have been numbed.

This enables me to function as I need to, so I keep taking my medication. But I can understand why someone might not want to live without really being able to feel love and happiness.

But the underlying MH condition hasn’t gone away, and stopping the medication without proper medical supervision is potentially very dangerous, potentially both to the person themselves and to their family.

OP, it’s very good that your MIL has told you this; it won’t be easy but you will need to speak to your DH about this.

Living with mental illness within a marriage requires certain concessions. One of those is that the mentally ill person does not just arbitrarily stop taking meds. It is a betrayal of the trust of their partner. Mental illness impacts the entire family.

He doesn’t need to know how you figured it out. You need to tell him you know he is not med compliant, that he needs to discuss this with his doctor, and that you need to be allowed to be part of the conversation as to what is going to happen going forward.