Abstract
The initial reactions to a bipolar disorder diagnosis of research participants in a small, qualitative study consisted of astonishment, dread of being “mad,” and extremely negative associations. All had prior mental health diagnoses, including episodes of severe depression (all but one) and alcoholism (one). All participants reported mental health histories prediagnosis and most had spent years contending with mental health labels, medications, symptoms, and hospitalizations. In addition, most participants were highly educated health professionals, quite familiar with the behaviors that the medical system considered to comprise bipolar disorder. Their negative associations to the initial bipolar disorder diagnosis, therefore, appeared inconsistent with their mental health histories and professional knowledge. This article contextualizes these initial reactions of shock and distress and proposes interpretations of these findings from societal and psychodynamic group relations perspectives. The participants’ initial negative reactions are conceptualized as involving the terror of being transported from the group of “normal” people into the group of “mad” or “crazy” people, i.e., people with mental illnesses, who may constitute a societal “denigrated other.”
Highlights
How do you make sense of this new label? How do you come to terms with feeling that you have moved into the category of people with mental illness, a group perhaps still considered to be a “denigrated other”? Research participants in a small qualitative study grappled with these questions when they were first diagnosed with bipolar disorder in adulthood
This paper addresses one area of the findings, i.e., an analysis from group relations perspectives of the intense and negative initial reactions participants had upon receiving the bipolar diagnosis
It’s no wonder it’s taken me like five years to even to get to a space where I can go, “OK, I’m doing all .” . . . It’s taken all of this time, really, to kinda get my feet underneath me and just to be able to . . . even talk about it in a way that I understand. Jodi felt that it took 5 years to recuperate from receiving that heartbreaking news. Her shock may be difficult to understand if we remember that Jodi is a physician who presumably would have been aware of the symptoms the medical system deems evidence of bipolar disorder
Summary
. And Something’s Odd— Within— That person that I was— And this One— do not feel the same— Could it be Madness?— This?. Imagine that, as an adult, you are diagnosed with bipolar disorder. How do you come to terms with feeling that you have moved into the category of people with mental illness, a group perhaps still considered to be a “denigrated other”? Research participants in a small qualitative study grappled with these questions when they were first diagnosed with bipolar disorder in adulthood. SOCIETAL GROUP PROCESSES Interpretations will be proposed to make sense of the negative and panicked initial reactions of research participants to a bipolar disorder diagnosis. The interpretations are based on psychodynamic and sociological group relations perspectives. In order to contextualize the interpretations, this literature review discusses theoretical ideas and research findings from both the sociological and psychodynamic fields
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