Are you manic-depressive?

I think it was the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I read it when I was a child. I must have read the classic comics because I can see the ghastly picture of the wife, drawn in white coming down from the attic, weeping, wailing, escaping from her cage at night. In 1993 when I came in close contact with manic-depression, I remembered that. It was the first time I understood that the woman must have been manic-depressive, that she must have wanted to kill herself to solve her problem.

Manic-depression is a mental affliction that is inherited. It comes in our genes. We probably have the seed among all of us from either side of our families, but it will only grow and bloom in one or in a few. So manic-depressives are not to blame at all for their affliction. Families are not to blame at all for not knowing what to do. I think for the longest time we kept this affliction secret, but now that time has passed, we know more about it. We must discuss it and if it is expressed in its most brutal finality – suicide – we must forgive it. They did not mean to hurt us. They meant only to save themselves in what seemed like, to them anyway, the only way they knew how.

This column is about the way I figure out manic-depression. I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist. I have no technical knowledge and I strongly recommend if you have kith and kin who need help, please call a psychiatrist and get help. They need medical attention and in the world of mental health, only psychiatrists can give them medical prescriptions. Psychologists cannot. When a person is having a manic-depressive fit (probably in the same month each year), he/she requires medication. The medication usually takes some time to kick in so you’d better go to a doctor as soon as possible. Medication is very important in your attempt to restore balance. You must make sure he takes it so you can help the improvement. Sometimes if you are not around, the pill is kept under the mattress or somewhere. That is too big a risk.

The way I figure it, if you are manic-depressive, you are either more manic or more depressive. If you are more manic, your episode manifests by your turning suddenly hyperactive. You are here, there, everywhere. Your wife complains that you are making her dizzy. She doesn’t know where you are. One minute you’re talking to her, the next you’re driving off in the car. Next thing you’re calling her from Ilocos. If mainly manic, the person has wild ideas. I remember talking to one who was hell-bent on setting up a local Starbucks, but it was also going to be a barber shop, a gym, an auto repair shop. It was going to be a very successful franchise. He was going to make millions of dollars. Carried to an extreme, a person having a manic fit may firmly believe he can fly and go up the tallest building and jump splashing very, very dead on the street below. His family is horrified at the suicide, but maybe he just thought he could fly.

Or maybe he is depressed. As he goes deeper, he thinks of nothing else but suicide. The most difficult conversation I ever had was with a depressive who tried to convince me that her only solution to her problem was suicide. When she recovered, she told me she had it all planned. She would return to her apartment, drink all the medicine she had been slowly accumulating by sending her driver out to buy almost every day and there her parents would find her dead and happy.

"Did you every wonder how they would feel?" I asked. She said that in a depressed state, that did not matter. All that mattered was that she would be dead. So, there really is an emotional imbalance present in people who commit suicide. They never know what they are doing, but it is the only thing that makes sense to them.

I saw the story of another suicide this week. My concern has always been press coverage. Reporters are never aware of manic-depression as an affliction. They do not know the research that says no one commits suicide unless he is clinically depressed, therefore they are not at fault. Sometimes you can see the cause of the depression – a teacher scolding, a financial disaster – but this may or may not be important. The important thing is: The person is manic-depressive; therefore, the circumstances that surround the suicide are minor.

I share with you what I know about manic-depression to let you know that you have to help. If you leave it alone, chances are nothing much will happen except you will find the person weird. But the next bout will be more serious. If manic, there will be much manic behavior, then the person will sober up, then there will be some depressive behavior before he goes back to normal. If depressive, there will be much depression, withdrawal, silence, then the person will sober up, then there will be some manic behavior before he goes back to normal. I ask you, however, to bring the patient to a psychiatrist at the first sign of a possible affliction. Do not conceal or try to hide it. There are palliatives. Get them, then enroll your patient in talk therapy to help straighten out the issues, to find out the causes, if the talk therapy works.

Whatever you do, don’t just sit back and get tense. Help. They need your help, your mind, your heart. If you read this too late, then learn to release and forgive. There was a suicide, but the act was not intended to hurt you. In their kind of logic, it was an act to save themselves. Whatever you do, please avoid what they did in the time of Charlotte Bronte – build a cage and hide the person when he has a fit.