Hi all, hope you don't mind me joining you. My teenage son was diagnosed as bipolar this week. It wasn't a shock, as I had pretty much come to that conclusion already, but my heart is breaking for him as I feel he has been so badly let down.
He started displaying hyper behaviour last year, which pretty quickly got him kicked out of 6th form. I kept saying to anyone and everyone that he was going through a MH crisis, but was treated as a overindulgent mother (I'm not!). CAMHS were useless to the point where I feel rage at how bad they were. At the point he was seen he was talking about suicide and describing what was clearly a psychotic episode, and they discharged him. Since then I have gone round in circles trying to get him the help he needed, and got nowhere.
Either myself or DH has to stay at home with him while he is in a depression, but they are preferable (to me) than his manic episodes when he is a danger to himself as he loses all sense of danger, appropriate behaviour, etc and I feel like I can't breath until he comes home safe. He gets through money like water, and is an easy target to any and every phishing scam going.
If it was clear to me in September that he may have been bipolar, why has it taken over 7 months and me going private to get him a diagnosis? I feel angry at all of the services and agencies that let him down. But need to regroup my energies into supporting and helping him. I also need to confess that I haven't always been as supportive as I could have been, when I have responded to some of his actions with anger, rather than recognise that he was really unable to stop himself.
The physiatrist was diagnosed him has started him on 2.5mg of Olanzapine, to be reviewed in a month.
I appreciate that this thread is really for those who have bipolar, but I hope you don't mind me gatecrashing while I look for ways to support him.