Enabling Bipolar

Posted on March 1, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Stigma Suicide

The question comes up sometimes when a family member has been coping with someone who is suicidal. Let’s say the suicidal person ((Long time readers know that this pattern fits me to a T)) has been sending you text messages describing his last will and testament. He wants to die and is exploring the resources on hand for their utility in promoting the abrupt sensation of all feeling forever. What do you do?

The literature of recovery, I have found, doesn’t define very well the boundaries of enabling when it comes to bipolar disorder and similar complaints. Some people think that by going to the rescue of the person — by calling their psychiatrist, by driving them to the hospital, by getting them to a place of safety where they won’t hurt themselves — you are enabling suicide threats. The logic is that by paying any attention at all, you are promoting the behavior. They draw the parallel to people who get drunk and fall on your doorstep. What do you do in that case? Do you pick them up or let them lie in their own vomit?

The drunk has brought the situation on her or himself. S/he lives in denial. “My addiction is not a problem.” Or to put it as a popular t-shirt puts it: “I don’t have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem!” To protect the person from the effects of her/his alcoholism is to allow the problem to perpetuate itself. They keep drinking because you keep protecting them from the effects.

Saving a person from suicide is more like an intervention. The disease can no longer be denied. You can’t pretend it is not there because there is a serious problem: the one you love wants to die. In my case, this came about because I have a brain dysfunction that clouded my mind and made me think that ending my life was the solution to my problems. Lynn acted to get me attention from my psychiatrist who, in turn, saw to it that I checked myself into what was then called South Coast Medical Center. They were not perpetuating my disease but taking a decisive step to save my life. This is not enabling even if they have to do it a thousand times. They are saving a life.

Can people enable bipolar disorder? It happens all the time. It happens when people tell you that your highs and lows are just personality quirks. It happens when they tell you to just tough out your low moods even if they are crippling you and putting you in a bed. It happens when they tell you that you are the life of the party. It happens when they tell you there is a big conspiracy of the pharmaceutical industry that is striving to keep you addicted to their meds and that the best thing is to just feel your own mind, free and clear as it is.

It happened on CNN the other night:

On Piers Morgan’s nightly exhibition of ratings neediness, the star ([[Charlie Sheen]]) dismissed doctors’ mentions of bipolar disease and then Morgan stepped up to give him a clean bill of mental health, telling Sheen he is “alarmingly normal.”

And what can we say about [[Tom Cruise]]? It has been said, believe me.

Not every bipolar enabler is a [[Scientology|Scientologist]] ((For a honestly biased anti-Scientology site, visit http://www.xenu.net/. For any Scientologists who want to diss my point of view because I suffer from bipolar disorder, remember you don’t believe in mental illness.)) . Many are family members who just don’t want the shame of a diagnosis in their families. Some are like [[Robert_Whitaker_(author)|Robert Whittaker]] who misreads scientific studies to suggest that schizophrenics are better off not taking their medication when the actual study says that schizophrenics who don’t take their meds say they are doing better than those who do ((Which is sounds like schizophrenics who don’t take meds are in denial about what their illness is doing to themselves and those around them)) . It’s about waging a reign of terror against those who choose to take medications to keep their illness in check. When you enable, you give the illness the upper hand. And you shorten and diminish the life that is being lived. I know because I tried life without medications until I was 47. I have lost my career and my self-respect for it. People who say that I am a dupe aren’t my friends.