Continuing from my research into childhood trauma, I am developing this to looking at how this early trauma manifests in serious mental illness. Focussing on BD 1 as I can contribute lived experience. Obviously this is just one symptom of the illness and over time I may pick from other areas.
Here is where I will post reading materials that I find resourceful and relevant to my practice now.
I’m very interested in psychosis in bipolar disorder, phychosis manifests itself differently in bipolar people compared to schizophrenic people.
My Psychosis
Accessed my medical records from my GP –
I suffered psychosis for roughly 1 month during a manic episode.
angry raspberry
A raspberry sits on a dish looking at me and judging me I could tell it was really angry and could see into my soul.
Granny Smith Chicken nuggets
Went to Mcdonalds for my chicken nugget meal and was confused but found it very funny that the chicken nuggets tasted exactly like granny smith apples.
Star
Sitting in the flat in my living room a small star came into my sight, I looked at it and for what seemed like a while it came closer and closer to me, it was so bright that when i shut my eyes it hurt then I would open them again and it was right up at my face trying to blind me. Don’t remember it going away.
shadow people
In my room lying unable to sleep because people were trying to break through my window they were black but transparent – according to my notes they were aliens but I dont remember this.
Green
Every day the colour green followed me about. when I went on walks especially. I remember walking up Rosemount and thinking the pavement must have grass on it but it wasnt grass it was just green. I was very stressed at why green was following me. This hallucination stays with me even out of episodes I still see the colours.
Colours
I saw colours like blobs everywhere. I remember at one point thinking everyone had a colour I remember Matthews colour was maroon and Lanas was pink and mine was red. But the colour I saw were floating around. I still see them but they’re usually a warning. But they progressively got worse and became the green that followed me. They can be different colours but mostly pastels like pinks purples and yellows , then strong greens.
Joanna Lumley and rowan atkison
Walking to the bus stop they walked past me on the street and I found it odd they’d both be in Aberdeen together.
KNEW EVERYONE I SAW INTIMATELY
Everyone I walked past I felt a strong intimate connection with, like they could see into my soul and I could see into theirs. I felt a rush of love whenever I looked into someones eyes.
Implanted thoughts
Thoughts I had weren’t my own, they had been put there. On reflection I’m still convinced that these were intrusive thoughts and not implanted thoughts but my notes mention aliens implanting them, this resulted in an overdose as a thought was implanted to take all my meds.
Hit a woman with a wine bottle
According to my notes I believed that Aliens had inserted a thought to hit a woman over the head with a wine bottle. I dont remember the aliens but I remember the thought holding the wine bottle and seeing the woman.
Bones trying to escape
Apparently I thought my bones were trying to escape – I dont remember this specifically but it made me laugh.
Bomb in my brain
I describe a bomb being in my brain that has control over my thoughts that was trying to ruin my life and wanted me to die.
fizzy
I reported that before these episodes I feel fizzy.
spanish
In a cafe with my boyfriend at the time and everyone was speaking spanish apart from us. matthew said they werent speaking spanish they were just speaking english. On reflection I remember thinking oh it must be a dialect i dont understand.
my soul
I remember being in uni and my friends coming to see me and I coukdnt look them in the eyes because the affect on my body was too much I thought they could see into every part of my being so not looking at them meant they wouldn’t see the badness.
radiator
I was very distressed by a radiator. I knew what it was and what it was called it was a radiator. But i didn’t know what it was.
Aberdeen
I knew I was in Aberdeen but I didn’t know that it was Aberdeen and I didn’t recognise it as Aberdeen.
Other Peoples Psychosis
My friend saw cats jumping out of crisp packets when she came out of surgery.
Bipolar Disorder: What It Was Like to Experience Psychosis (themighty.com)
“There are demons in me and I need them out of me — I can’t take it. I need someone to sedate me or something. Please, get them out of me. You have to get them out of me!”
Psychosis – Hearing voices, seeing things, and unusual beliefs (healthtalk.org)
“Lights seem to glow brighter and brighter, things floated against my eyes, covered my eyes, they disappeared and on another occasion when I closed my eye they still remained, so I was really, really ill. The last episode when I still living at home was that I felt like some force was turning me round in a circle in the room. It was literally trying to push me downstairs but the force.”
“I thought that my hands were aging, like every half an hour on the half an hour. Because… like physically see them getting older. And then, you know, but I knew, I knew like cognitively you don’t age every half hour on the half hour, but yet I could actually see that I was aging and so I was like doing my working with like …I pulled my sleeves down so I couldn’t actually see what was going on and still that is something I still struggle with.”
Psychosis: from seeing snakes to picturing a future | MHT (mentalhealthtoday.co.uk)
“One person I knew in hospital saw people covered in snakes, while another saw people on fire. I myself have heard threatening and taunting voices, saying: “You wait until you see what I’m going to do to you!”
REading
Psychosis in Bipolar Disorder: Does It Represent a More ‘Severe’ Illness? – PMC (nih.gov)
– Psychosis, generally defined as the occurrence of hallucinations or delusions, is a common feature across numerous psychiatric disorders.1–3 An exemplar psychotic illness is schizophrenia, which is often associated with chronic psychosis symptoms and poor psychosocial outcome. Psychosis is also an especially prevalent phenotype in bipolar disorder (BP), with greater than half of all individuals diagnosed with BP experiencing psychotic mood episodes in their lifetime.4 Consequently, there is a common clinical assumption that BP with psychosis represents a more ‘severe’ form of illness than BP without psychosis, and may resemble the clinical and functional deterioration commonly seen in primary psychotic disorders.
- hallucinations
- delusions
- confused and disturbed thoughts
Hallucinations
Hallucinations are where someone sees, hears, smells, tastes or feels things that do not exist outside their mind.
- sight – seeing colours, shapes or people
- sounds – hearing voices or other sounds
- touch – feeling touched when there is nobody there
- smell – an odour that other people cannot smell
- taste – a taste when there is nothing in the mouth
Delusions
A delusion is where a person has an unshakeable belief in something untrue.
A person with persecutory delusions may believe an individual or organisation is making plans to hurt or kill them.
A person with grandiose delusions may believe they have power or authority. For example, they may think they’re the president of a country or they have the power to bring people back from the dead.
People who have psychotic episodes are often unaware that their delusions or hallucinations are not real, which may lead them to feel frightened or distressed.
Confused and disturbed thoughts
People with psychosis sometimes have disturbed, confused, and disrupted patterns of thought. Signs of this include:
- rapid and constant speech
- disturbed speech – for example, they may switch from one topic to another mid-sentence
- a sudden loss in their train of thought, resulting in an abrupt pause in conversation or activity
Cognitive Deficits in Psychotic Disorders: A Lifespan Perspective – PMC (nih.gov)
Premorbid cognitive functioning in bipolar disorder
In comparison to premorbid cognitive function in schizophrenia, fewer studies have been conducted on premorbid cognitive deficits in bipolar disorder. Of these studies, even fewer have examined premorbid impairments associated with bipolar disorder with psychotic features (Daban et al. 2006). In terms of research examining bipolar disorder in general (i.e., including bipolar disorder with and without psychotic features), studies largely fail to find evidence of significant premorbid cognitive impairments (Lewandowski et al. 2011a; Martino et al. 2015; Mollon and Reichenberg 2017; Parellada et al. 2017). For example, several studies failed to find premorbid IQ deficits among children and adolescents who subsequently developed bipolar disorder (Cannon et al. 2002; Sorensen et al. 2012; Zammit et al. 2004). Furthermore, there is evidence that higher cognitive functioning is associated with the development of bipolar disorder (Tiihonen et al. 2005; MacCabe et al. 2013). A significant limitation of the existing research is the lack of studies comparing bipolar disorder with and without psychotic features on premorbid cognitive functioning (Parellada et al. 2017).
Second, if family history variables are combined with the occurrence of II.) adversity in childhood, such as verbal, physical, or sexual abuse, risk is further heightened. The age of onset of bipolar disorder in the US averages below age 13 (Post et al., 2016c); the average age of onset is 26 years if there is neither a positive family history of bipolar disorder in parents or grandparents nor a history of childhood adversity. A history of only verbal abuse in childhood (in the absence of physical or sexual abuse) is also associated with an earlier onset and a more difficult course of bipolar disorder in adulthood (Post et al., 2015a). Aas et al (2016) reports more than a dozen studies linking childhood adversity to a more difficult course of illness in early onset bipolar disorder. They also cite 6 studies reporting adversity as a risk factor for BP onset. Maniglio (2013) discussed 20 studies linking a higher incidence of adversity in families with a bipolar offspring versus controls.
Characteristics of patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder according to visual hallucinations are presented in Table 1. In univariate logistic regression analyses, patients with VH were similar to patients without VH for most sociodemographic characteristics, including age, sex, dependency of living situation, children, employment and handedness. However, patients with VH were less likely to have graduated from college compared to patients without VH. Diagnostically, patients with VH were more likely to have schizoaffective disorder, less likely to have bipolar disorder and more likely to have an anxiety disorder. Patients with VH also had a greater total number of SCID diagnoses.
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