skinonna Asked October 2013
Anybody else experiencing this?
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Looking for comments...Been observing my MIL for some months now as we spend a day and night at her place each week. Noticed she vacilates between two distinct behaviors. One I would describe as flirting...She has a sweet little voice and is all lovely dovey...especially when her best friend visits or she needs to be in public like at the dr's office...The other is nasty...contrary...biting.
There seems to be nothing in between. Through the years she has kept my husband and her grandchildren at arm's length..."don't come this weekend, I have plans, etc." While telling her friends we ignore her. Needless to say, we experience the 2nd behavior most of the time. Anyone else experiencing a loved one with dementia with such a split personality?
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Glad SOSDIL1 got her elder's DX'd.
Moods that fluctuate between lovely & mean, or hyped up & depressed, with elements of impulse control issues, are very often Bipolar [formerly called manic/depressive]
These are different from one person to another; can vary in presentation, w/ some showing some symptoms, while others show other symptoms more predominantly.
People who suspect it, really need to have professional evaluations--it could be something else--including something fairly simple, like B-Vitamin deficiencies, or, even Hypothyroid issues, or other hormones imbalanced.
There is medical help.
There are alternative & nutritional measures that could be combined with med use to help prevent those mood swings..
It's no longer only about taking lithium--which has been the Gold Standard for treating bipolar conditions. Lithium has had scary consequences in the past. So has shock therapy.
These days, many Docs may start by trying a low-dose anti-seizure med, maybe increasing that by also splitting the daily doses into 2 to 4 doses daily to keep blood levels. IF needed, they can add antidepressants.
They can do that, and still look for underlaying causes that can be corrected, and once that is done, can more easily take a person off these 2 drugs, easier and better and with less adverse effects, than if they'd been on Lithium for a time.
Viable Choices such as people have never had before!
Look at a person's history:
=Poor nutritional intake?
=High fevers in childhood?
=Head injuries: ANY in their lives?
=Abused in childhood?
=Generational patterns of behaviors?
=Family HX of abusive /changeable behaviors?
=ANY known family HX of mental disorders--though it's very commonly never diagnosed; for nearly all of history, including the 1900's, people avoided seeking diagnoses like the plague [no treatments or terrible ones, societal castigation];
instead learned ways the person could just get by in life.
Most often, extended families helped --actively-- cover it up by "helping" the person affected--even in the latter half of the 1900's, it was talked of in whispers, alternate terms that kept it understated, flagrant lies.
Which meant, the affected rarely got ANY constructive help, instead skating by for whole life, being considered an "interesting", or "complicated" person who has "Moods".
Often very creative, they'd be able to impress others enough, it helped cover their underlying issues; or, their moods were blamed on other more acceptable things, like post-partum depression; or, that they had really tough, complicated lives--seemingly through no fault of their own [never mind loads of repeatedly, really poor choices]...
These days, society is paying better attention, doing research, studying it better. There are tools for evaluation that never existed before.
Constructive diagnoses & constructive helps with fewer adverse effects, are becoming more common; societal views are improving [we're not "there" yet--but far closer than ever before].