Posted by Blue Cheer 1 on February 16, 2002, at 7:05:23
In reply to Re: Yes Puzzle! » Blue Cheer 1, posted by anniebananie on February 15, 2002, at 23:36:35
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> > Comorbid bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders (OCD, agoraphobia/panic attacks, social phobia, etc.) are quite common, and they come and go during the course of bipolar illness.
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> Did you read about this somewhere & if so where? I'm particularly interested in the coming-and-going aspect of these other disorders. Do you know if ADD may be one of those conditions?
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> Annie
Well, in an effort to figure out what the heck happened to me, I read about OCD for two years or so after being diagnosed as having it (hospitalized, too), following Valium d/c. Prior to that, I'd been diagnosed as bipolar (for 20 years). The only OCD symptoms I had prior to Valium d/c (which I thought were due to lithium or psychological tension) were some transient sterotyped compulsive movements and plate scraping while eating -- like rubbing the edge of the plate with the utensil). I was trying to understand how I got from bipolar I to OCD. Then I had a manic episode, and *then* I found some articles about the comorbidity of BD and OCD. Although the literature was scant at the time (1995), I found some excellent articles (especially by Stephanie Kruger, M.D.) about comorbid bipolar and OCD, and unipolar and OCD, and that it was quite common (as high as 35% incidence in one study). If you do a PubMed Medline search for "anxiety disorders bipolar" or "bipolar comorbidity" or "comorbidity bipolar ocd", you'll find a number of articles. According to one psychiatrist I know, this is the "age of comorbidity." Mauricio Tohen, M.D. wrote a book a few years ago called Comorbidity of Affective Disorders. I see a few articles in Medline and searching Google about ADHD and bipolar, but mostly in children. I really don't know much about ADD, but I've been told that bipolar disorder can be comorbid with just about anything. Given their multi-factorial etiology, I guess the same can be said about most other psychiatric disorders.Blue
poster:Blue Cheer 1
thread:92727
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020215/msgs/94391.html