Michael-Mood Disorders Complicate Brain Injury

Part Twenty-One

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

800-992-9447 

So let’s focus specifically on mood.  We talked about mood some before.  Do you have a formal diagnosis of bipolar disorder? 

I have – TBI, bipolar, schizophrenic. I’m dyslexic, they believe I’m ADD from when I was youth to where I was an adult.  I don’t know, I just, anybody who asks me it’s just TBI usually.

Talk to me about the bipolar issues.  We talked about the depression and the mania. 

I’ll go back.   When I was going to university at my second college, I started showing signs.  I was on the verge of being an alcoholic, and then I got kicked out, got accepted to school up here at UWO; found out I was dyslexic and that solved a lot of problems.  But then I had my car accident, and then when I came back.  Before then you could, I could never tell, but the person who diagnosed me, Dr. Nash, he said I was moderate to severe at the time he diagnosed me.

With respect to bipolar? 

Being dyslexic.   And that was going into the signs, and after my car accident I came back a year later, year and a half later.  One I needed, you could really tell I was dyslexic, and then with my bipolar, a psychiatrist through university had started putting me through meds, because I took myself off all meds.

Now you said that you also have a schizophrenic diagnosis? 

Yes.

Is that something that’s confirmed or just something some doctor came up with who didn’t understand everything else that’s going on? 

I’m not real sure.  All I know is, when I start getting frustrated, and if I feel like people are putting too much pressure.   You can ask the kids, I’ve gotten to the point a few times, to where I just get so angry, I hear, I start hearing audible stuff.

So your, episodes, if they’re schizophrenic, come at a time when you’re having, neurobehavioral problems, that we normally associate with TBI. 

Yes.  I’ve quit three jobs because of it.

Next in Part Twenty Two – Return to Work after Brain Injury