I repeat my message, seems to have been deleted. My mother was affected of bipolar 1 which turned to bipolar 2 during the last 3 years of her life, after the death of my father. She got a manic episode and then a major depressive episode, and died shortly thereafter of a heart stroke.

Her 2 sisters have suffered all her life also of this "depressions" and married alcoholics, a brother of hers was also alcoholic, and a cousin of mine killed himself with less than 30 yo.

I have myself had interpersonal problems all my life, and now ask myself if this is due to my background as a child in a sick family, or if I am also affected. Could be that i've had several depressive episodes, but not as bad as to not allowing me to function. However most of my problems arise from my interpersonal hypersensibility, from being extremely insecure at times or superman at other times, from taking excessive risks or being unable to take decisions at other moments. All this would sound rather familiar, I guess.

Most of my life i've been a loner, have never had a job that lasted more than 2 years even I am a 45 year old qualified veterinary surgeon. I've had an unquiet life, have travelled a lot and made 50 different jobs, from sailor in a merchant ship to research surgeon (my actual job). During the last 8 years i've been forced to mantain more stability (i married and had 2 children, 10 and 3), which is in a way a conflict for me, as I have always the impulse to move and leave the job as soon as I get into conflicts with people or dislike something.

I am actually in separation from my wife since 2 months ago, which triggered a depressive episode (first strong one in my life) that forced me to take stjohnswort, which helped a lot to float again. :? This is the worse personal crisis i've had in my life, and is forcing me somehow to try to find a solution for a situation i've never really faced before.


The nice side of the thing is expressed too, as I am a practicing musician since more than 20 years ago, playing in the swiss music circuit. 8)
so my mother was so diagnosed post-mortem shortly, we had no idea of that. Until before that we considered the whole simple depression...

My brother is now under lithium. His doctor says prophylactically during 1 year, as he has tendency to depressions. And he says too that this family history a low blood lithium level is enough to initiate the lithium therapy. What do you think?

I wonder if I am just affected psychologically from my childhood experiences, or clinically affected.

I decided to perform a family constellation therapy soon, in an attempt to solve my problems. I don't know if it would be adviseable to visit a psychiatrist. My brother advices so doing. How about that? I've read that there is no chemical test to diagnose bipolar; possibly magnetic resonance, but not in subclinical cases... What do you think? What would you advice?