Posted on February 29, 2012

I believe the father of my children is suffering from bipolar. After reading various stories on line and finding out about the symptoms, it is now clear to me that this has been in his life for as far back as 20 years. Over the past 20 years my family and I attributed his behaviour to his personality and accepted that he at times could be a horrible bad mouthed and violent person who acted like he was king. He could also be very loving and very generous caring individual too.

In the past 3 years he went through a time where he was adamant that he was going to be prime minister and that the government and special police force were watching him, the house was bugged, and I can tell of many more conspiracy stories against him. He wrote numerous long long letters to MP’s, police, and the Queen. This went on for some time. We knew something was wrong but couldn’t get him to see he was acting strange.

Shortly after this, he went into what we called a breakdown of some sort where he refused to leave the house and said he couldn’t forgive himself over the many things he had done. He refused to believe God would forgive him even though he turned toward religion and spent days and months reading the bible. He homed in on the wrath of God and that God was going to punish to him. He cut himself off from the outside world and the few friends and family he had left. He refused to see his children he adored and never left the house. He gained a lot of weight and thought everyone everywhere were talking about him and watching him if he ventured outside. He was like a mouse speaking very quietly and I assume sleeping a lot as he never left the house.

His mum with whom he lived became anxious that he would harm himself if left alone. This lasted for about a year and was opposite to his normal character. Although things started to get better, he still spoke of things that were evidently strange to others. Then a sudden death of a close family member occurred and we thought he would go back into a depression, but he didn’t — he seemed too cope with this well.

He started getting more confident seeing old friends and building back up his social life. A roller coaster of events happened, good and bad, which are too long to list. Today, we (family, friends, children) are now the devils, liars and deceivers and are all corrupt according to him. Currently we have stopped all contact with him due to fear of his unpredictable behaviour when he is like this. We know he needs help, but how do you get him to go to his GP when in his own words he is ‘so happy and my life is so wonderful’? He thinks nothing is wrong, but everyone else around him are on the receiving end of his behaviour clearly sees something is wrong.

We have called the GP who cannot do anything unless he comes himself. We have gone to the police and they clearly see he needs mental assessment after showing them the written communication he is sending. But they cannot not do anything either. He has lashed out on his mother in her late 70?s and his sister and they are scared of what he will do next! I have stopped my children from being in his care. We want to help him but don’t know what to do next. Please could someone suggest something to get him to recognise he needs to be assessed? We’re going out of our minds.