I agree totally that coming off psychiatric drugs is always risky. Your experience of discontinuing drugs and becoming unwell/psychotic is very common. Withdrawing from these drugs too quickly and not having other supports or not having made all the positive changes necessary before doing so will often result in an individual struggling again.

By saying, “People who recover after a bipolar diagnosis are ones who never truly had bipolar to begin with” you put forward an idea that I find interesting. Diagnosis rates for bipolar have soared in recent years and I think every doctor/psychiatrist in the world would agree that a lot of people are being diagnosed without much evidence of extreme manic and depressive episodes. Many people diagnosed today would not have been diagnosed on the older criteria for bipolar/manic depression which used to be a rare condition. This means there are a lot of people who believe they have a disorder called bipolar who are gradually finding out they are not so bipolar after all.

I think I fall into this category. I was told I had manic depression then told I had bipolar. The drugs I was told to take for bipolar gradually made me less and less well. The drugs may well have been the main cause of for my worsening symptoms. To survive I had to take less drugs. Eventually my doctor said I did not need the psychiatric drugs at all. I was taking the drugs believing I ‘was bipolar’, attending bipolar meetings, facilitating a group for people with the bipolar diagnosis and so on. I had extremes of mood and there were plenty of health professionals saying I needed the drugs. Like many other people I have successfully withdrawn from the drugs. It was a slow process taking me 12 years. I have changed my life and increased the ways I have coped with stress in order to do this.

There is no clear cut line between a ‘bipolar person’ and a ‘non-bipolar person’. Everyone has emotions and everyone can struggle with their emotions, so while there is a diagnosis of bipolar there are always going to be an overlap and people who would prefer not to be called bipolar getting labelled as such.

I too have often heard diabetes compared with mental health. People get diagnosed as diabetic then take medication or change their diet and are viewed as in-recovery, needing to maintain these changes for life. There are some diabetics who have changed their diets/lifestyle who are no longer classed as diabetic at all but this is currently rare. Emotional difficulties tend to be different. There are many people who manage their emotional health difficulties without any type of psychiatric drugs and many who have recovered completely or manage their difficulties by other means. I have personally met many people who have had serious mental health difficulties who are now doing very well either not on any drugs or using very little of a drug. In saying this I am not minimizing the distress caused by having these problems. I recognize that a lot of people continue to find drugs a useful tool to help to manage from day to day.

- I am thinking that calling it something different does not solve our problems. Ian