Hello there. How is everyone.

I just recently found out that two of my cousins have bi polar disorder and I have another cousin who has it.

Are people just born with it, or do they inherited it from other family members? These are cousins from my moms side. The whole family has had problems with depression.

Now on my dad's side, I have an aunt who is also bi polar.

In what ways to people help treat bi polar? Thank you for all your help.

There is all kinds of medications for people with Bi-Polar...

No worries, a bunch of people will tell ya where to look soon :D

People are born with a possibility of being bipolar, but something has to happen to trigger the actual illness. It is known to run in families. It does in mine.

There is an excellent book called Bipolar Disorder: A Guide for Patients and Families by Francis Mark Mondimore. You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore. I highly recommend it.

I was told by my daughter's doctor that it is hereditary. My mother had mental illness in the 60's, but they didn't know a lot then about the causes.

Hello there. How is everyone.

I just recently found out that two of my cousins have bi polar disorder and I have another cousin who has it.

Are people just born with it, or do they inherited it from other family members? These are cousins from my moms side. The whole family has had problems with depression.

Now on my dad's side, I have an aunt who is also bi polar.

In what ways to people help treat bi polar? Thank you for all your help.

Palomeno18,

Just because you have mental illness running on both sides of your family, does not mean you will have mental illness too. From what I have read and been told by my doctors, is that people who have mental illness in their families and have "dramatic events" taking place in your life, can trigger depression or even something worse.

I too have mental illness in my mother's side of the family, but yet not every one of my siblings has mental disease. Four out of six kids in my family are "normal" by most standards and me and another sibling (although she refuses to be diagnosed) have a mental disease.

Have you had any symptoms of a mental illness or was this just a general question?

P

There are factors that put you at risk, including a history of alcoholism, alzheimer's, or mental illeness (namely bipolar, but less often depression or schizophrenia) in your family. As Polaris said, however, that doesn't mean that you'll be affected, it just means you're at a higher risk. As far as a trigger, I'm not sure what determines whether you'll have the illness, but I suppose Polaris already covered that.

I have been told by my doc and have read that depression, mental illnesses, and all kinds of diseases are heriditary. All kinds of people experience traumatic events in their lives. In our cases, we can't deal or get past those events as easily as others (if ever). (i hope that was a correct way of explaining that) Anyways, everyone is right. Even though it runs in our family.... it won't affect all of us. It could even skip generations.

What I have noticed in my family is that it has really hit the women hard. Almost all of us have had it. The only thing is that I am the first one to be diagnosed but not the first to have an episode or be medicated. My grandmother actually had an episode in the 70's and was temorarily hospitalized. My mother has been undiagnosed and in denial for years now. Now that I am no longer in denial myself and am being medicated....I can now see the line in my family history.

Point being, yes it runs in the family and no not everyone in the family will be affected. I guess I should have just said that to start with. Would have saved everyone some reading time. lol! Thanks for your time....

depression runs in my family. again, mostly in the women, and i think the men are in denial....shows up in other aspects...my great grandmother, grandmother, and mother, were all hospitalized as a result of it at one time, my great grandmother recieving the electro shock. my sister was hospitalized for depression and separation anxiety, and probably a hadful of other things, and me for what they thought was depression, but later diagnosed as bipolarII, which i can definitly see now, and think to be a fairly accurate diagnosis. The only family memeber diagnosed with bi polar is my great aunt on my dads side. my uncle has schizophrenia. i think being born, i was pretty much screwed. my moms father was an alcoholic, my mother was molested and then a priest attempted rape on her, and she was an alcoholic, then when i was little, and my sister was a baby, she attempted suicide, and would "go away" for periods of time (not including hospital time), being the root of my sisters "sparation anxiety disorder", and probably some of my issues. does all this happen for a reason?? im hoping i can get this under control before i have kids, so even if its hereditary,by the time i have kids, what happened to my mother wont happen to me....

:rolleyes: Weasle, I think that in your case you just have to make sure that you raise your children differently from what your parents did you. Speaking from experience, parents and how they raise their children, have a lot to do with how kids turn out as adults. As it was said before, most bipolar symptoms are induced by a traumatic event. It is very possible that if you hadn't been through all that stuff as a child then you might not have shown any signs of BP as an adult. :angel: