Posted by Ritch on December 8, 2004, at 13:04:38
In reply to Just Diagnosed with Bipolar II--What is it?, posted by BRC on December 8, 2004, at 9:56:31
> Hi, I have beem seeing my pdoc for a couple of years now for OCD, anxiety, and major depression.
>
> I always had these racing thoughts that I considered part of my OCD that really crippled me and acouple of months ago my neurologist put me on the med trileptal for nueropathy in my right leg. And I discovered that the medication helped with my daily racing thoughts at higher doses.
>
> Went to my scheduled appointment with my pdoc yesterday and he said that it is common that Bipolar II goes undiagnosed in people with people with OCD.
>
> I am a 28 year old male that is in otherwise good health. But I really don't know what Bipolar II is and what it does.
>
> Was wondering if someone could explain it to me.
>
> Thanks,
>
> BRCI suppose one could divide bipolar into the cognitive symptoms (racing thoughts, ruminating, flight of ideas, derailment-tangential thoughts, distractability) and the emotional (mood) symptoms of elation, rage, depression, and the behavioral symptoms of hyperactivity, lack of impulse control, etc. It sounds like your symptoms are predominantly cognitive. Another thing about bipolar is the *cylicity* or *recurrent* nature of the symptoms. They tend to change, wax/wane. They generally are not constant over stretches of time. I'm a chronic rapid-cycler so I tend to have chronic symptoms and not much time is spent in "normal" phases. My anxiety symptoms do fluctuate with my mood cycling (qualitatively and quantitatively). There are definite OCD-like elements to my anxiety-"sticky" repetitive/'loud' thoughts/music/head noise, etc. However, some of the medications commonly used to treat OCD (SSRI's esp.) generally make this stuff worse.
poster:Ritch
thread:426121
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041206/msgs/426192.html