Bipolar Disorder DENIAL: Refusing Treatment For Mental Illness
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Bipolar Disorder is truly a journey – and not just for those of us with the diagnosis. The impact of this illness can be far reaching to include our friends, spouse, family, coworkers, and more.
I’ve had many people ask me to make a video talking about “how to approach someone who denies that there’s a problem.” This is actually a challenging topic without a simple answer. Everyone’s situation and challenges are different. I have some valuable advice I’m going to share, but it’s important to be realistic with expectations when it comes to someone struggling with mental illness. Progress can be slow. It takes time for people to become self-aware of their symptoms, develop new habits, seek treatment, and mend broken relationships (where possible).
Even if our symptoms are obvious to those around us, “part of the illness includes not being able to see them ourselves.” This is where the gentle observations of those close to us can be of huge benefit – IF the Bipolar individual is open to hearing them.
Hopefully after watching this video, you will have some new tools, ideas, and information about Bipolar Disorder to help you on your journey. I’d love to hear what you think in the comments, and if you have any questions, I always do my best to help.
If this is your first time visiting our channel, welcome to “the Polar Warrior club!” We are completely dedicated to helping individuals, families, and friends who struggle with, or know someone living with Bipolar Disorder. Our goal is to provide actual tools, tips, and discuss topics that can potentially help “Polar Warriors” grow to live a more balanced, peaceful, and fulfilling life. We truly hope these videos inspire & educate those interested in knowing more about this serious mental illness. PLEASE remember to subscribe so you don’t miss a video that could impact your life in a profound way!
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-Rob Whittaker, Polar Warriors: Bipolar Support
50 Comments
got diagnosed at 6 years old which is rare and never been medicated due to my parents being in denial now I'm feeling it at 25.
I know I have something but I feel like my bipolar is misdignosed. I think I have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex my moods aren't random just exaggerated. I've been on 6 meds and the only one that helped was lithium. But I can't take it bc it messes up my thyroid 🫤
My brother has this issue since 2011. He will deny this till his death.
My husband is bipolar 2. He stole £30k from me. He just stopped taking meds. We don’t live together. The NHS won’t talk to me, they say he hasn’t given permission. I reported it to his psychiatrist, he hasn’t answered. I don’t know what to do.
You are so shiny
It was hell, she would constantly look through my phone, whenever I fell asleep, looking to blame me for cheating.
She went crazy when she founf a 7 year old text from an ex i forgot to delete. She accused me constantly of cheating with her cousin who had done nothing but good towards us. The worst part of this all?
She was the one cheating, at first emotionally with hidden conversations with guys.
I set the boundary early on that i was not okay with emtiional relationships with other guys. She argued that not even her family? I said ok except that.
Guess what???? She got pregnant with her cousin within 2 weeks after we stopped talking. I cant even x.x Only God can help me now 🙏
I don't have polar disorder but am interested in learning about it thanks
Diagnosis is actually a craft.. make sure you don't get overpharmed.
THANK YOU !
I do not like people with mania, im sure theres exceptions but these people will be complete psychos one day and then act like it never happened because their ashamed.
Great video. I am going to talk with my brother in law about this.
Damn sounds like
my mom
It's been fourteen years. You've been trying to be gentle and kind
I've watched all your videos on bipolar and that's pretty much my mom
Brothers worked in the mental whole profession for ten years
He works with bipolar patients all the time and he knows she needs medicine
She was diagnosed by a professional
She just thinks she has insomnia so she won't take her medicine
She hates the side effects
Does taking medicine really hope to stabilize a person?
My siblings and I have been doing this for 14 years. My mother just won't do it
My brothers had to deal with it more and my sister. Because I was living out the country for twenty years
My mother's convinced she doesn't have bipolar. She just has insomnia and she's pissed off with life because it's hard
This channel is a godsend. My 30 yo son is experiencing BP1 with delusions and hallucinating. His anger at his wife and me, his mom is terrifying and upsetting. She has left for her own safety and we are both trying to help and keep a conversation open. Ive learned so much from you!
I had been abused by the system since I was diagnosed. It was so hard to trust the “professionals” treating me like an animal. Finding the right care made a big difference in acceptance.
I’m taking lithium I was able to get on it. I’m not sure if I am bipolar but I sure have a lot going on with me. I don’t know how to go about getting diagnosed.
My wife is presently hospitalized after her first big manic episode and it has left our family with so many questions and feelings of despair. Your videos are helping to pieces things together for us so thank you, perhaps when she's stops thinking we put her in the hospital we can work together to be together.
Sometimes I want to stye I feel guilty all the time people call me crazy and it hurts because they're not in my shoes I don't feel it but I feel it and I feel guilty all the time I feel guilty cuz I'm hopeless I feel guilty for a reason.
Sometimes the guilt kills me racing thoughts they're killing me and sometimes your family makes you feel bad sometimes I want to go to the hospital but I am scared that they are going to leave me there I feel like My life is over I can't even have a normal relationship because I am scared of what they will think about me thank you for your videos
Thank you
What are your thoughts on MK ULTRA , V2K FREAQUINCY S ?
Im bipolar myself . Been there done that . I can totally relate to the denial part and hostility. What got me to treatment and seek professional help was for sure setting boundaries ! Its crucial to set boundaries with those bipolars who affect us and cant see how their behaviours are not only harming them but others and loved ones around them . I was causing so much pain and suffering to my family when i refused to take medications and was in denial . But them setting firm boundaries with me actually got me to treatment . I wasnt doing it for myself , but for them.that was totally fine at that point , because once i started treatment and got on meds my life turned out to be more peaceful and easy to manage. I failed so many times thinking i can get off my meds once i was feeling better but then my life collapses again , its very helpful that the bipolar person has the awarness and insight on their repetitve pattern and the results of their denial causing destructive actions they cant see. Setting boundaries in my personal opinion is a very effective approach and should be firm and clear. The more people around me keep telling me denial is part of my iillness and this is the nature of it, i would never seek treatment, not only that,but it also fuels my denial! Is like telling some on sick you have 6 more months to live but you should maintain your healthy lifestyle and stick to the same routine . at that point it doesnt matter coz that illness has already dictated how long would i live. Or keep telling the addicts addiction is a disease that cant be cured ,but can be treated when 90% of treatment approach fails. It took me few years to come to terms with accepting my bipolar. Acceptance made a huge shift in my healing process and understanding of my illnesss. Everything changed from that point on . Things were still hard some times and there has been struggles, but i can sure manage and cope instead of fighting it. Empathy is good to a certain level as long as the bipolar individual is aware its their responsibility to make this shift or not. Getting hostile when confronted about my illness is just a technique i use to avoid being held responsible for my decisions, to justify my denial and to have people avoid me and leave me alon so i continue with my life the way i want.
I have a family member who has children and so far refuses to tell their children their diagnosis with severe bipolar disorder. It’s sad to me because just like any physical illness mental illness is a part of a family medical history. This family member has been diagnosed much later in life and I just don’t want to see that happen to the next generation.
When the peoples you love think badly about mentall illness in general you have a lot of chance to be in denial. Another thing when i am depress i want to find a exterior reason to the pain like something bad happen or someomne act badly just because it s hard to face the realty of my condition. Its hard to admit something that the society judge.
its tearing me apart
well done! again, you provided a lot of info here. nicely delivered.
Yeah I'm struggling with myself, I been trying to exercise to increase my mental awareness
Why I started to become ill because of my bipolar disorder. My mom lied and tricked me into going to the hospital. When we got there, I was furious, yelling, screaming, swearing. But I'm glad she did. It saved me. But not totally there was a very long road ahead of me.
I'm here watching this because I have to live with a bipolar sibling who does the exact same things you are describing in this video: denial, refusal of treatment and borderline delusional sociopathic tendencies. I care way too much for her and it's gotten to the point where she has given me trauma-based anxiety and fear. I can't do it anymore. I wanna get away but I can't because I can't afford to move out…
My 26 yr old son just got out of the hospital yesterday for maybe the 5th time in 9 yrs. He knows he has this illness but is in complete denial that he needs medication. He has usually self medicated with Marijuana. Before that, alcohol….what a disaster that was! Ive been educating myself on bipolar disorder and your videos have been so helpful to me. I sent my son this particular one and hope he listens. Ive set up therapy for myself and my first session is this morning. Things have got to get better. I just want my son back 😢 😢
In my case they tried everything and nothing works so it stands to reason that if these drugs harmed me with side effects and did nothing that I don't have the condition? Basic diagnostics right? Not that doctors do it anymore. It went out in the 90s
.1 My niece is going through it and she has lost her apartment beat up. Her parents does not have work is losing her car, always knocking and demanding money. And every time the police has taken her to the hospital, they keep app for 5 days and they got hugged out with no medication. She's in Orlando, Florida.There's no help there at all
My best friend has been telling me I’m bipolar for 8 years now. And as I enter my 50th hour awake I’ve been researching and watching videos on the subject for a few hours now. Definitely starting to believe him now.
My brother struggles like you describe and he is in a facility rn resenting everyone for putting him there. Your video has been helpful to me and his very upset mother.
I've given up on a bipolar family member. Low contact then no contact. Sorry, enough is enough. Not sacrificing my life at the foot of this person.
I have a bipolar mother who wants me support her financially. However, if i do that i will not be able to support myself of my family.She will be 60. I feel like I've had to be the adult since I was 12. I can't afford to bail her out whenever she makes financially reckless decisions. She refuses to get help and has even physically attacked my wife.
How do you see primarily a suffering person if they are denying they have it and actively hid it from you?
Ty
My wife is pregnant and everything has gone off the rails. Currently in a mixed state and it’s really difficult to manage. I compare my compassion to a Kevlar vest… I’m trying so hard to blame the disease, not her, but Kevlar can only be shot so many times until a bullet goes through.
With the psychosis, it’s wide ranging – I don’t love her, care for her, prioritize her, etc, and on the larger scale – she thinks the sun has been replaced with LED’s during the eclipse behind the cloud cover because it’s more white now and was yellow before…
Just very difficult. We have a gorgeous 2 year old and I’m afraid of my wife’s unhinged reactions
this is the place I'm in now…except for substance abuse unless you count food
The person in my life who won't get help has now shut everyone who knows she has a mental health issue out of her life. I had to step away because of my own depression. So how should I know if she is starting to go into the depressive phase? I just don't want to get sucked back in, but I also don't want her to die, and that's where this is heading.
I've had a grand total of ONE hypomanic episode which was nearly eight years ago, which I believe was triggered by venlafaxine prescribed for major depression. Like it didn't seem to work but suddenly seemed hit me all at once or something. I never felt so functional in my life EVER. I truly felt the "if you put your mind to it you can do anything" quote while like this. I was convinced everything was cool and great and I requested my doctor to taper me off of the venlafaxine and was obliged. I gradually came down from that and after month or so, it had fully worn off and I was in a worse place than I was before the whole episode. I dealt with it for almost a year not being sure what actually happened or why I felt so bad, and finally tried to get help. I even retried venlafaxine for a while but nothing happened on it that time so I went off again. I wasn't delusional, but I couldn't get anything done because my mind was changing every several minutes and struggled with impulse control.
I saw an ARNP who quickly put me on olanzapine, and within a few weeks I felt as though I was back to something similar to my pre-episode baseline. Not where I wanted but it was an improvement. But continued use started sapping away my thoughts, creativity, intelligence, motivation and energy. I became a complete zombie that slept for 12 hours a day and ate simple, repetitive keto-friendly meals to ward off the hunger and weight gain side effects. It became unbearable after 8 months. I couldn't do it anymore. The ARNP wouldn't take me off so I went off cold turkey and never saw the guy again feeling uncomfortable. I feel like this drug seriously damaged my brain and the effects it had still affect me to this day, with minor improvements at best. I have chronic insomnia which has made me dependent on trazodone.
I saw another ARNP who was much friendlier and easier to work with who tried lamotrigine but I felt absolutely nothing on it, positive or negative. You could call it trauma maybe, but I've gotten pretty fed up with pills, especially ones that that seriously mess with brain chemistry for myself that I wasn't already familiar with. I don't ever want to touch an antipsychotic again. I functioned poorly enough before the episode, but the consequences of venlafaxine followed by olanzapine made me far worse. My new ARNP did bring up the idea of trying lithium but I think it had some caveats that kept me from leaping for it.
To date I've never had another episode, but my life's a mess that I've struggled for decades to clean up. So I kind of take issue with the idea that one episode is all it takes, especially when it was seemingly chemically induced with no recurrence. So I haven't been active in getting further bipolar treatment.
Although my writing might give an impression otherwise, I feel like I've been losing my ability to communicate and interact with others successfully, which is severely impacting my ability to get proper care, when social skills and communication were already lacking before. It's really accelerated in the last few years. Although it's invisible, my writing ability is actually impacted too–it takes me a lot longer than nearly everyone to compose messages. I usually don't know what I want to say instantly unless it's really short and have to think word for word, so it's stupid hard to find words and not be simple. It doesn't help that I'm also perfectionistic.
This morning, on utube,some one chimed in saying "There is no such thing as bi-polar". That is a definition of an ignorant person. I had to pray for him, i hope The Spirit of the Lord touched him.
Come on dude. You know the reality is we stay until WE are ruined. Eff off.
I wonder what that means ultra rapid cyclone no matter how many times I’ve studied. I still don’t know like what ultra rapid what’s you know I’ll cosign I mean I do but it’s hard to tell like there’s so many distinctions between episodes and what’s an episode and what kind and what happens if your mood varies all day like and your energy depending on everything even like your meds in your bloodstream, it’s crazy. It’s very very hard to figure out like it could be recorded as all levels. It could be so many things and then what happens
Side effects suck…
Have can we have like some sort of forum where everyone talks about their experience as the treatments and what it looks like because some of us have ADD and autism and not bipolar or some of us have been diagnosed with bipolar or some schizoaffective and undiagnosed Immune situation as present as a typical bipolar and all of that, but I’m just wondering in general can we talk about like some medication protocols that are really healthy like say there was someone and they were in the keto diet and low-dose you know, I don’t know lithium when things go wrong so they tend to get really manicky And they can talk about how it did or didn’t their way or their blood sugar or how it is but in the long run it was better or you know someone else that might be autistic and has learned to PRN like for a while you know they were on stabilizer, but they were not really bipolar and they learned how to do XYZ and change their lives or you know someone who is psychotic and Was and became depressed and gained a ton of weight and was in danger of heart disease and you know found something that’s less harmful to them or maybe even like you know it’s prescribed. I don’t know what goes or met Forman or though and that helped normalize things you know because people The truth is were all very degrees of this and the DSM and doctors try. We definitely have to trust them, but and I shouldn’t say this to a lot of people, but I’ve been one who’s always trusted but my know my family. They’re all doctors. I’ve gone to medical school there’s a lot and, you don’t want your typical patient to think of that but when you’re informed, and you have a team around you, that’s all saying that, including you know one of your doctors who is a really well-known compassionate, psychiatrist psychologist, and an instructor and he’s not being paid by ICD code and diagnosis then you start to learn a little more and at the end of the day it’s Benefits and trade-off and we’re changing organisms affected by our age or lifestyle Our relationships are jobs the amount of sun we get what we’re eating a lot of factors and just like randomly overdose people antipsychotics for everything. There’s a lot of harmful effects at the same time and not have any modality of treatment even more harmful but at the end of the day we don’t wanna mitigate crisis, we wanna improve quality of life for, having this discussion like for me the last Dr Most proficient one actually wanted me to get meds and but I was doing Covid and I was moody and I get too depressed and I have no motivation so I started my ADD meds again and I will miss menopause. There’s a lot of other things like autism. I don’t have a job right now. I don’t have connections. There’s a lot going on like I can’t exercise which is my savior, but I have knee injury so I’m just gonna say there’s a lot, but then so many doctors before that we’re ready to load on the you know listen even when I’m mostly manic. I mean I’m mostly like depressive and that’s usually secondary to being overwhelmed because of autism and ADD and they also may be concurrent, but this is again the viewpoint a lot of high profile, doctors and friends and family who are doctors versus the ones I see with my insurance regularly Often times just like they wanna give me antipsychotics for everything by the way when I have taken those I’ve gotten even more sleepy and less motivated and all of them I’m actually or like a robot. I’m not getting any sleep and I’m getting forgetful and becoming a dangerous driver, but anyways, I’ll come that was like I’d usually be on them a couple months and my body like that small amount of weight or the weirdness and people in my life will qualify it. We’re not worth it so they even said don’t do it you know but it actually sent me into worse I don’t mean I mean, like just being fat and feeling ugly and this regulated and not being able to exercise that’s a really big deal for a lot of us And you already healthy not an option. There’s nothing you can do and if you wait and you don’t exercise or your woman or you move funny or you have text or you start stumbling and you know for me sometimes it’s also forgetting everything like when I was going to medical school again I was on my stimulus and it didn’t go and it’s like antidepressants and sleeping nine hours I sleep 10 to 12. I also forget things midstream like like my what I have to say is gone before I even finish drinking it so you just at the end of the day and you learn from each other, but this comes only. so there’s a lot of things that go on behind all of this yeah definitely like to be a lot more taught and integration and medicine about the different types of things how they manifest different medical things what happens when they occur family situations trauma Noor diversity, traumatic brain, injuries, certain situations health and not health, overwhelmed food, diet, exercise, aging medication, alternative medication, and having you know a team like at some point you know if you don’t have people to help you or and your own mind goes here and there there times and you’re in capacitated and you need head of your king and like changing insurance and all that stuff that’s a real hassle so there needs to be a conversation about all of the systems in place, and even on you know medicating or not medicating and maybe ways besides ass apps right now I’m very good but smart way isn’t smart and smart things design to give the feedback and reach out for people when they know their habits and their ways show the patterns like you know it’s a sort of automatized the data about people so when they’re in the middle of something and have no one can get help they need you know it really is. It’s like iPhone and I can’t get off and together. Don’t know such a thing anyways thank you.
These people need to be held against their will and they need to be forced to get better
Im a british 52 year old man . My wife has bi polar and behavioral problems . I am at a point where i wish i was dead myself. Im at my wits end things have become so bad . And our health service is on its knees and useless. All i want to do us make her happy . But day after day she just sits there head down . Not wanting to get dressed or go out or even eat. Her family dont want to know. I feel lost. Is there any practical help i can do for her. Anyone im desprate.
It was so very kind of you to make this video to help others. God bless you in your path and life. I hope all continues to stay well and good.