Bipolar ex

[mytimewillcome]

My ex has just told me that he has been diagnosed as bipolar. At the moment he isn't seeing the children because of two incidents of neglect (left children in his flat on their own and stayed in bed the entire day instead of supervising them and giving them lunch). He is looking to restablish contact with them again but now I have this information should he have supervised contact? He is saying that he isn't a danger to the children but if his condition made him leave the children on their own then I think he is a danger to them. What would you do in this situation? The children are 6 and 4. Thanks.

Superviced contact

Considering the young age of the children, I'd say supervised contact only, certainly no over night visits.

The question is whether he is in treatment and stable. I have bipolar and am the primary caregiver for my two children. When I am well, treated and stable, I am absolutely capable of looking after them. When I relapse, I'm not.

In the situation you describe, I think that supervised contact may be a good idea, at least initially, but how you go forward depends on how he is doing with treatment.

Well the other problem is that he is refusing to telll me anything about his health saying its 'again at his human rights'. He has only just told me why he was hospitalised for three weeks and that was nearly 4 months ago.

*against

Well that's not on. It's not about his rights, it's about the rights of your children to be safe and you to be certain they will be safe. That means that he needs to be stable at willing to confirm that he's in treatment.

If he's not willing to do that, then supervised is all you can do.

have social services been involved?

Just that they were involved when I was in hospital and did an safeguarding assessment/liased with the kids dad. It sounds like you have safeguarding concerns. I didn't want ex to know ins and outs etc of my treatment as he is not a nice person. I hated the assessment procedure but it meant that the SW could talk to their dad about soley about the care/welfare of the kids/them returning to me without disclosing necessary medical information.

What are the characteristics of bipolar disorder? I've googled it but it would be good to hear what actually can happen. Do meds help?

There are different sorts of bipolar, and like any MH problem it affects people in different ways. You'd have to find out from your ex how it affected him.

He will not tell me anything and he is a prolific liar as well. His main concern will be to minimise it as much as possible even if it's quite serious not the children's wellbeing. Is it possible for me to talk to my children's doctor and get them to talk to his doctor?

I don't know if they'd do that due to patient confidentiality. But I'd absolutely insist on supervised contact til he either gives permission to talk to MH team or has safeguarding assessment from children's social services.

Permission for you to talk to MH team about him I mean.

But what you might find, if you do talk to MH team is that they may well say that it is not for them to comment on his suitability to look after the kids, that is for children's services to assess. Just repeating what my ex was told by MH team when I said they could talk to him with regards my MH and the kids!