Posted by Ritch on February 16, 2002, at 10:57:05
In reply to Re: Yes Puzzle! » anniebananie, posted by Blue Cheer 1 on February 16, 2002, at 7:05:23
> >
> > > 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.
> >
> > 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?
> >
> > 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
Blue,Annie:I tried to recover this information, but can't find it right off, but I was reading something about ADHD the other day and it said that *other* family members who have OCD is *very* common with children and adults with ADHD. So I am seeing these "links" with Bipolar/ADHD, ADHD/OCD, and have seen links with Bipolar/OCD. I have all three to some extent-Bipolar/ADHD/anxiety (GAD-socialphobia/panic). I have got some theories, but I *think* the whole thing is just an *attentional syndrome*. Whether your thoughts are tangential (bipolar), stuck in a "loop" (OCD-GAD-SP), interrupted and straying (ADHD), it boils down to just a cognitive processing problem with behavioural effects. When this is all combined together you are going to have a *lot* of trouble treating all three thought-processing problems. I can take a small dose of a psychostimulant and the "straying" and "tangential" thinking diminishes, BUT it is easier to get stuck in a loop (anxiety). If I take a little SSRI, the "stuck in a loop" thing gets freed up and I can multitask and my anxiety from getting stuck diminishes. But, that tends to result in worsened ADHD/bipolar problems: I get more "euphoria" from an SSRI than I did on a pstim. I will also start a lot of unfinished projects (overtasking), that never get done.
There's got to be some way...
Oh, Blue, I read your post below-thanks for responding.
Mitch
poster:Ritch
thread:92727
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020215/msgs/94407.html