How long in hospital?

[lougle]

Hi everyone, I hope hope you don't mind me gatecrashing. Mum has been in hospital with severe depression (bipolar) almost three weeks now. We finally got to speak to a doctor this week (long story) who said in his experience it's likely to be another month before she'll be ready to leave and three months before she'll be 'better', but these are both 'ballpark' figures.

At the moment she can't care for herself in any way and her longest sentence was 6 words today (can you stay a bit longer) but apart from that she can't converse at all with us yet, other than nodding and shaking her head, or the occasional I love you. Yesterday it took 10 minutes to walk her 20 paces across to the toilet.

It's taken 3 weeks to get to this point, and she seems so much worse now than when she went in, I find it hard to believe that she might be well enough to come home in a month. Do people just turn a corner suddenly?

I don't have bipolar myself I'm just unipolar depression.

In hospital I did see some people with bipolar depression go from really very bad/completely confused and incapable to seeming ok pretty quickly. I remember being amazed at how people could go from being so ill to being 'normal'.

Obviously this is just anecdotal. I don't know your mum, not a doctor nor do I have bipolar myself. But I do trust what the hospital doctors say. I was told by my consultant it would take a 'very long time' for me to get better and I thought he was talking nonsense once I'd turned a corner. I was wrong, he was right. It's shocking if you don't come across very ill people much. These hospital doctors are dealing with them all the time. They know their stuff.

I know you probably know this but it is good that your mum has your support whilst she was in hospital. Try not to worry too much- she's being looked after by people who know what they are doing, and she WILL get better.

Oh lougle that sounds awful.

I don't know much about bipolar; is it caused by a specific event (such as trauma)? If so I suspect that one of two things will happen. A quick recovery due to medications being adjusted correctly, or a longer time period to recover through medications alongside talking therapy.

I suspect that if it's a month that they've said then it will be a medication adjustment period; these can take effect quite quickly in many cases (I was medicated for another illness and within 72 hours I was mostly fine).

Have you seen a treatment plan, or are you able to ask for an outline of what they have planned for treatment and whether there will be involvement with HTT etc. after discharge?

They've increased her antipsychotic and introduced some diazepam to help her anxiety. She's having delusions which are very disturbing. But she can't have therapy yet because she can't engage as she's too ill. She can't even walk around the ward on her own. We have to ask someone to collect her from us and guide her back to where she needs to go when we leave.

Antipsychotic adjustments can work quite quickly. I took one for trauma-induced psychosis - I wasn't an inpatient but my GP came twice a day; day four I managed to walk to the GP surgery. It took about a month for me to be well enough to engage with people in everyday life; I slept a lot (I actually slept for 29 hours straight with interruptions only from the GP at first). However, I had quite a lot of calm inside my head relatively early on in the process. I do think to everyone I probably looked worse though in those first few weeks of engaging again even though I felt the changes inside my head. I was quite slow and had quite bad brain fog; conversations were difficult to follow.

That's good to hear. So far (three weeks in) the anxiety and delusions are proving hard to overcome. Two days ago she couldn't leave her room due to anxiety resulting from a delusion, but desperately wanted us to have a visit with her. We weren't allowed to her room, so the only way she could have her visit was to overcome the anxiety. Sadly, we had to leave without seeing her.

Yesterday, the lead consultant intervened and said that if Mum couldn't leave her room because she was too anxious, then regardless of policy, we were to be allowed to go to her room. So we got to see her.

Today, she managed to leave her room and spent an hour just cuddled into my father's arms, resting.

I've been hospitalised for bipolar depression 3 times. 6 weeks, 3 months, two months.
It's a bit about how long is a piece of string, but I hope she's on the mend soon.
It's horrible for both her and you.

Thank you, Keema, that's helpful. So the timing does sound right. I understand from the doctor that she won't be 'well' when she's ready to leave hospital, but she'll be 'well enough' to move to shared care at home.

I hope you are well now. I thought I knew how bad depression was when Mum was just 'ill' and I would have described her depression as severe. Now, I understand what severe depression really looks like.

I have bipolar and get predominately psychotic depression. Once I'm on the right doses of medication, I recover pretty quickly. But medication can be very hit and miss. I hope she feels better soon