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Years later, Renee, now a devoted wife and mother of three, began to experience some of the same behaviors that she saw her father struggle with. She experienced rapid mood swings, overspent when she went shopping, had racing thoughts and found herself uninterested in things she used to enjoy. I had a strong tendency to isolate myself, Renee explains. When she began behaving erratically and unpredictably, her family convinced her to see a psychiatrist, who hospitalized her and diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. When I saw the doctor, she asked if anyone in my family had a mental illness, Renee says. I told her that my father had been diagnosed with depression. But as we discussed my behaviors-and my fathers-it became clear that we both probably had bipolar disorder because of the depressive and manic behaviors we exhibited. I wish that someone could have figured that out when I was young. Maybe our family wouldnt have been torn apart. Bipolar disorder, sometimes called manic depression, often runs in families, just like heart disease or certain types of cancers, explains Julie Totten, president and founder of Families for Depression Awareness (FFDA), a national nonprofit organization that helps families recognize and cope with depressive disorders. If people can provide their doctors with information about their familys mental health history, physicians can more quickly and accurately diagnose the condition. The Mental Health Family Tree program, recently launched by FFDA, draws attention to the important role a persons family mental health history can play in diagnosing bipolar disorder, while helping individuals identify some of the common-but sometimes unknown-behaviors associated with the condition. Through the Mental Health Family Tree program, people concerned about the existence of bipolar disorder in themselves or in family members can complete a simple, interactive questionnaire-or builder-to better understand behaviors associated with the condition and to map the behaviors of bipolar disorder in their family. This builder results in a family tree that individuals can print out and use to facilitate conversations with doctors to help lead to quicker and more accurate bipolar disorder diagnoses. It can also be shared with family members to reduce stigma surrounding bipolar disorder, and emphasize that this is a medical condition, not a shameful family secret. |
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