I have depression and from what my psychiatrist says borderline personality disorder. It is defined on Wikipedia as "a personality disorder characterized by unusual variability and depth of moods. These moods may secondarily affect cognition and interpersonal relationships." I'll say it affects interpersonal relationships!
I'm married. It's coming up on 3 years that we've been married and 7 together. I go through different "moods" throughout the day depending on the situations I am in or come across. One minute I can be happy and the next I can snap at the smallest provocation and make a big issue about nothing. My husband still cannot understand the fluctuations and will often react to me acting out at him.
It's like I have a number of different people in my mind controlling my emotions. One person controls my happiness, another my sadness, one my anger and one my frustration. There is one for my anxiety and one for my sensual side (she doesn't come out that often anymore). It's not multiple personalities and it's not schizophrenia. But something controls all these different moods and they can come out unexpected and for no reason.
I think borderline personality disorder is fairly common. If you haven't watched the movie "Girl Interrupted" with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie then you should. It gives a very different picture of mental health and mental health wards - you know the places where you stay if you are suicidal or have tried to commit suicide. Winona Ryder's character has borderline personality disorder. Watching an actress play something that you have is weird because then you start to think that you are that character or should be acting like that character because Hey! she's an actress and the people who wrote that script are professionals and they got the disorder bang on because that's their job and they wouldn't portray someone with something false! Ha!!! All you naive people out there who think that!
I also have Tourette Syndrome and I was diagnosed at age 6. It's not an easy syndrome to live with. For adolescent males and females it plagues them with all these stereotypes that are seen in the media. People automatically think that you shout obscenities all the time and have these outrageous arm movements. For most adolescents they will grow out of TS by the time they've reached puberty. For a small number of adults, TS is still an issue. My psychiatrist asked me, when he found out about my TS, if I "say things". Ha! There is only 10% of people who actually exhibit coprolalia! Yet that is what the public, movies and my psychiatrist think about when they hear about Tourette Syndrome!! How sad!
I am on two different medications to try to balance out my depression and my BPD. One is Cymbalta, an antidepressant. I guess it's working. I really can't tell and that's a little frustrating in and of itself because I have BPD which causes my mood to go all over the place and affect my depression. Which brings me to the second medication Seroquel. This medication is used to treat Schizophrenia but at extremely high doses. At lower doses it's used to treat depression and it's used as a mood stabilizer. I'm slowly increasing it (under psychiatrist orders) to help stabilize my wild moods. We'll see what happens with it!!
I've been on other antidepressants - Paxil, Zoloft and Cipralex. I was on Zoloft for approximately 8 years and weaned myself off maybe 6 years ago because it wasn't doing much for me and I wasn't seeing a regular doctor to help monitor it. The Paxil was a mess and screwed me up (I took it at 16 and it didn't help me) and the Cipralex I took for 7 weeks prior to starting the Cymbalta.
There are many drugs out there now to treat depression and all the lovely little issues that accompany it. It is always a good idea to have these drugs monitored by a physician or a psychiatrist to make sure you aren't abusing them and that they are working to their full potential. There's no use taking a drug if it's not working!
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