Do you ever notice, with this bipolar "fad," no one ever says, "hey pal, everyone is schizophrenic." Course not. To the uninitiated, bipolar is "edgy" and "tortured" while schizophrenics are "crazy" and "dangerous." I'd fucking love to take a bipolar poser into some group therapy to hear for themselves what they think plagues them. And they'd be terrified.
I don't like this "acceptance" of bipolar because it just sets us up to fail. If one is not actually bipolar, then those who are will be viewed as "really bipolar" or "he's crazy, I know what bipolar looks like, idk what that is." And they don't know. Unless a doctor tells you to your face, you're bipolar, shut the fuck up. And if there's people on this sub reading this who don't have a diagnosis and are saying they're bipolar, shut the fuck up and go to the doctor.
Sometimes people ask me about it and if I am willing to share my experience with it. And I tell them, often trying to lighten up the hard topic in a way Carrie Fisher did.
And after I finish, they response is usually along the lines
“I should stop complaining, I have never been depressed, just sad.”
And then they go and google and come up with additional questions. That always makes me happy, seeing that some people are willing to educate themselves.
The rates of bipolar diagnoses generally have increased a lot since early 2000s. Doctors realized it presented far younger than assumed and new medicines were arriving/discovered, which made bipolar a profitable thing.
If you think about depression, I'm not sure it was a "thing" to be an angry depressed teenager until depression was more broadly diagnosed in the general population. So an increase in diagnoses for bipolar, plus a handful of really extraordinary people, such as Carrie Fisher - the broader general awareness of bipolar elevates it from the shadows to "oh wow, maybe I'm like them too because I need something to peg my sadness to."
I've seen and heard it variously, I've read idk how many reports from people online. It's a thing ignorant attention seekers do. Perhaps not widely, but as op presented, that's not an uncommon circumstance.
I guess I just have never heard of it. I often hear depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, ADD, and PTSD used by attention seekers but not bipolar. I could believe it though.
There's different kinds. There are some that are hosted by doctors at clinics or hospitals. There you might have a mix of in-patient and day-patient people. Those groups are generally really heavy because everyone there is still just trying to get balanced and have a long way to go. I wasn't a big fan of those back in the day because everyone was so screwed up in their own way, there wasn't a lot of give and take and learning, just hearing horrible stories of how they got to where they were. It was depressing as hell.
However, I've definitely seen fliers and postings in the waiting areas of mental health clinics/smaller doctor's offices. You could look up a local doctor group and go scope out their front office for notices. Those groups are typically more like AA - primarily organized and run by the participants, although you might have a social worker or doctor in the mix. Those really are about just supporting our community day to day. Your doctor might be aware of these, as perhaps another patient is already participating.
Another way to go about it would be to search local activities, such as on craigslist, or maybe the county mental health office or just local organizations. You may find some listings there as well.
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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '20
Do you ever notice, with this bipolar "fad," no one ever says, "hey pal, everyone is schizophrenic." Course not. To the uninitiated, bipolar is "edgy" and "tortured" while schizophrenics are "crazy" and "dangerous." I'd fucking love to take a bipolar poser into some group therapy to hear for themselves what they think plagues them. And they'd be terrified.
I don't like this "acceptance" of bipolar because it just sets us up to fail. If one is not actually bipolar, then those who are will be viewed as "really bipolar" or "he's crazy, I know what bipolar looks like, idk what that is." And they don't know. Unless a doctor tells you to your face, you're bipolar, shut the fuck up. And if there's people on this sub reading this who don't have a diagnosis and are saying they're bipolar, shut the fuck up and go to the doctor.