TBI Mood Disorders Complicate Brain Injury

TBI Mood Disorders: Michael Part Twenty-One

Michael goes into detail about TBI mood disorders and what diagnosis he has and how they effect his everyday living and relationships.

So let’s focus specifically on TBI mood disorder.  We talked about TBI mood disorder 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 as a TBI mood disorder.  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

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

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