My wife attempted suicide last night

[Anonymous]

I am so disgusted by this troll. Who makes up a scenario like this and then continues going with it? This poster should be banned.

[Anonymous]

Sorry that your wife tried to commit suicide. It is difficult to go through and it is a normal reaction to be scared and angry at the same time. Try to find her a good psychiatrist and therapist. I -have a recommendation for a therapist in the Fairfax area who is really caring and amazing at what she does. Nancy Shawki with Vanguard Therapy 703-303-8832 and she accepts insurance because not alot of therajavascript:void(0);pists in the area take insurance anymore! I hope your wife gets well and feels better.

[Anonymous]

Op. Make sure you have a good life insurance policy
On your wife and make sure thy pay on suicide.

You will probably need it to rise your kid.

[Anonymous]

Now you have the chance to help her fix whatever is wrong. She is lucky to be alive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so glad she survived, OP. I lost my brother to bipolar disorder by suicide, and my mother attempted suicide a number of times when I was a child. I am so glad you are there for your child, and I am so glad that you love your wife and want to support her. It is really okay to be angry, too, and scared and hurt.

Unless you have reason to believe otherwise, please do approach this from the perspective that she was not in her right mind when she made this "choice". I read some really nasty judgmental posts above, and I think it's important to look at this from the knowledge that her brain is very, very broken right now, and not able to function in a way that allows her to see rational options in front of her. Just like kidney disease prevents those organs from functioning correctly, her brain illness is preventing her from seeing how much she is loved and needed and wanted. There's a really good chance that somehow her sick brain convinced her that what she did was best for you. (I had a really close friend who attempted suicide when her girls were young, 100% convinced that she was doing the best thing to ensure their happiness and security. It was completely nuts, but a totally unselfish gesture from the point of her crazy brain.) What she chose, depending on what her brain was telling her, was not necessarily selfish or weak or cruel. She might honestly have thought she was doing you a favor.

It is SO frustrating and heartbreaking when we can't just logic someone or love someone out of a brain illness. But if you think of it as an organ failing, how could love and logic ever be enough? You can't love a person enough to cure their heart disease or convince a liver to work properly by telling it all the reasons why we love it and want it to work properly. She needs medical treatment, but we are sadly still very much in the dark ages when it comes to treating the brain. Please try to forgive her if her brain can't see how much you guys love her and how much she needs treatment, just as you'd forgive her breasts for getting cancer or her intestines for having colitis. She's not choosing this.

And please do take care of yourself. The scary thing is that all the love in the world may not save your wife. Your child desperately needs you to be healthy, to be emotionally available, and to be dependable. I'm rooting for you so much.

It sounds like you haven't been the primary caretaker of someone with mental illness. This is different than organ failure or heart disease.

The disease itself drives them to refuse treatment, actively rail against it, or grasp at their caretakers to "fix" them. But end of the day, OP, you need to realize the ONLY person who can really help your wife, who can really make her better, is herself. She has to do the work, she has to embrace the treatment; and lots of mental health treatment feels hokey and silly (which is partly why many very smart people with depression have such a difficult time with the therapies).

Your job is to love her, and tell her you want to be there with her to get better, and you have to just wait and see if she will make progress. But always be mindful that you can't cure her, and to look out for the well being of your child and yourself as she tackles her demons.

You are dead wrong there. I have been the primary caretaker of my mother nearly my whole life. I was the closest thing to a caretaker that my brother had as well.

There's actually very little in your retort that in any way contradicts what I said. If love and logic could cure a brain illness, most of us wouldn't have them. As you said, it's often a symptom of the illness itself that makes people refuse treatment. It's not truly a CHOICE...not a conscious, willful one, because the same person at another time in their life when the disease is NOT symptomatic would often make an entirely different choice. In the 2700+ days that my brother lived without a full manic episode before his last one, he fully grasped the need to manage the behaviors that could lead to a trigger of aanic episode and was fully supportive of the need to go back on lithium should he destabilize. We talked of it often. But then circumstances in his life (his wife's PPD/paychosis) for which she refused treatment, the birth of his second child, led to him losing major sleep over a sustained period, causing full blown mania. And once his brain went haywire like that, there was NO rational thought or fully voluntary choice in his decision making. It was out of his control.

What is illusory is the sense that the person is really capable of choosing the right thing. So yes, I agree that aentally
Ill person typically must be the one to choose to get better. But the nature of the illness is that particular organ is that they often will not make that choice, because their brain isnt working well enough to choose it. And it makes as much sense to say a person should choose for their kidneys to work if they are failing. A person's willpower and intention are not necessarily any more successful at choosing to fix their own brain illnesses as they are at choosing to fix their kidneys. Luckily some mental illness is mild and a person retains enough rationality to make treatment choices that help. But that's not always within a patient's control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're angry because that was an incredibly selfish thing to do and she was abandoning you. You have a right to be angry.

Fuck you, PP. OP has a right to feel whatever feelings he feels, but you have no fucking right to label his wife as selfish. She has a disease that is not her CHOICE. She has been healthy in the past and things were fine; she loves her husband and child and would never have made this choice when he was not sick. Her suicide attempt is a symptom of her illness, not a character flaw!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, what do you think is triggering her deep depression?

She is bipolar. And things had been going so well, she seemed really stable, until this.

Are you journalling symptoms? Until I started journaling, I found with my bipolar nowExDH that sometimes I thought things were going well, but I really wasn't connecting the dots on the subtle signs across time.

Medication is tricky. Had she recently been through a medication change? Are you sure she was taking meds? Is she on an anti-depressant along with a mood stabilizer? Sometimes an anti-depressant can be "activating" enough to drive suicidal thought in BP. This happens because the AD can increase mania and the associated irrational thought patterns or because the AD can lift the almost-catatonia like aspect to depression enough to enable the bipolar person to DO something about their depressed feelings.

Standard bipolar treatment is a proven mood stabilizer (usually lithium or depakote) closely monitored to ensure consistent blood levels in the effective range and also supplemented by sleep aids or anti-psychotics or anti-anxiolytics in order to provide extra control for these symptoms (although often a panoply of meds to address a variety of symptoms really means that the mood stabilizer itself isn't the right one or the proper dose.)

I really think some of the advice above re: she has to want to save herself is harsh and wrong. The dilemma of bipolar and other mental illnesses is that the brain is not rational and thus unable to make rational decisions about treatment choices. Even when stable for a long time on meds, many persons with bipolar and other mental illness decide that they don't need their meds and try to go off, usually with negative consequences. It is an open question whether this desire to go off meds is a "willful choice" that patients make due to the stigma of mental illness and/or the serious side effects of meds or whether the decision is rooted in an early phase of a decline in mental status, i.e. returning mania or depression despite medication (which happens). Ellen Saks speaks eloquently in her book and in public talks about coming to terms with permanent medication of her schizophrenia. Xavier Amador also writes very helpfully on how family members can facilitate treatment choices.

That said, in the early phase when a person is nowhere near stable on meds, it may take more involvement of the spouse or other family member in treatment choices. The scientific literature and best practices are clear that outcomes are best when families are involved in treatment. You should be meeting periodically with your wife's psychiatrist and therapist to understand her med regime and recommended social habit patterns (social habits like sleep, exercise, diet, interpersonal interaction and self-care are also proven to improve outcomes, see studies on IPSRT aka Interpersonal Social Rhythm Therapy) so that you can support it at home.

Yes, it's true that bipolar patients have to take responsibility for their own care, but, IME, this can only begin once the person is sees improvement from meds and is beginning to stabilize. It is only at that point that they are rational enough to reflect on aspects of their life that they can control that contribute to stability, what kind of help they need from family members and what kind of back up plans should be put in place.

OP, if this is her 3rd attempt, I have to ask -- does she have proper legal plans in place? A will? A power of attorney (POA) naming you as able to make medical decisions on her behalf -- and her I refer to more than just the typical living will or POA that clarifies resuscitation wishes in various scenarios, but a POA that enables you to make medical decisions on her behalf and which waives HIPAA/privacy rights, which often cause a problem for families who need to provide care and thus need to know about treatment. Now might not be the time to push getting those in place, but if you don't have these you definitely need to seek counsel. NAMI has info on this.

Also, OP, you and your child definitely need your own therapist to help you deal. Feeling anger is normal, but conveying it to your wife and expecting some kind of apologetic response or change in behavior is not necessarily a reasonable expectation with this illness. As another PP said, the thought process is very irrational. Try to find a PhD clinical psychologist who provides psychotherapy and has lots of experience with mood disorders.

Thank you, PP!!! PP here whose brother died from bipolar disorder by suicide. Thank you for saying ago well what I was trying to say about this not being a choice.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Christ this thread went off the rails.
To clarify about the sleeping pills. She had a 6mo prescription for them to be filled once a month. The idiot pharmacist filled all 6 mos for her at once, 600 pills total. She also took 60 Percocet, 22 narcos and 20 hydrocodone. The narcotics were (are) mine but were just in the cabinet because I didn't need them anymore. I've talked to her psychiatrist and her therapist about how the sleeping pills were filled. That's a battle I can't deal with right now. My wife should be dead. She should have been dead before the EMS even showed up at the door. How the fuck she survived I don't know. She's coming home tomorrow and I'm scared out of my mind. I came here to get some support because how do you tell your friends, even the closest ones you have, that your wife tried to kill herself. You don't. You just paste a fake smile on your face and go on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm so glad she survived, OP. I lost my brother to bipolar disorder by suicide, and my mother attempted suicide a number of times when I was a child. I am so glad you are there for your child, and I am so glad that you love your wife and want to support her. It is really okay to be angry, too, and scared and hurt.

Unless you have reason to believe otherwise, please do approach this from the perspective that she was not in her right mind when she made this "choice". I read some really nasty judgmental posts above, and I think it's important to look at this from the knowledge that her brain is very, very broken right now, and not able to function in a way that allows her to see rational options in front of her. Just like kidney disease prevents those organs from functioning correctly, her brain illness is preventing her from seeing how much she is loved and needed and wanted. There's a really good chance that somehow her sick brain convinced her that what she did was best for you. (I had a really close friend who attempted suicide when her girls were young, 100% convinced that she was doing the best thing to ensure their happiness and security. It was completely nuts, but a totally unselfish gesture from the point of her crazy brain.) What she chose, depending on what her brain was telling her, was not necessarily selfish or weak or cruel. She might honestly have thought she was doing you a favor.

It is SO frustrating and heartbreaking when we can't just logic someone or love someone out of a brain illness. But if you think of it as an organ failing, how could love and logic ever be enough? You can't love a person enough to cure their heart disease or convince a liver to work properly by telling it all the reasons why we love it and want it to work properly. She needs medical treatment, but we are sadly still very much in the dark ages when it comes to treating the brain. Please try to forgive her if her brain can't see how much you guys love her and how much she needs treatment, just as you'd forgive her breasts for getting cancer or her intestines for having colitis. She's not choosing this.

And please do take care of yourself. The scary thing is that all the love in the world may not save your wife. Your child desperately needs you to be healthy, to be emotionally available, and to be dependable. I'm rooting for you so much.

This is the best advice I've ever read on here. Ever.

OP, wishing you, your wife and son prayer.

[Anonymous]

Prayers to you and yours OP for healing and grace - I cannot imagine what you are experiencing. I know someone who just recently lost his wife to suicide. I hope you never have to experience that or anything like it again.

[Anonymous]

Wow. A person who's taken 700 sleeping pills should be DOA, unless her stomach's pumped by medical professionals within minutes after the overdose.
No offense, OP, but your story sounds pretty unbelievable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. A person who's taken 700 sleeping pills should be DOA, unless her stomach's pumped by medical professionals within minutes after the overdose.
No offense, OP, but your story sounds pretty unbelievable.

SHe probably started vomiting them up as her stomach reacted from being so full. Picture 700 pills and how much space that physically takes up, then the water with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Christ this thread went off the rails.
To clarify about the sleeping pills. She had a 6mo prescription for them to be filled once a month. The idiot pharmacist filled all 6 mos for her at once, 600 pills total. She also took 60 Percocet, 22 narcos and 20 hydrocodone. The narcotics were (are) mine but were just in the cabinet because I didn't need them anymore. I've talked to her psychiatrist and her therapist about how the sleeping pills were filled. That's a battle I can't deal with right now. My wife should be dead. She should have been dead before the EMS even showed up at the door. How the fuck she survived I don't know. She's coming home tomorrow and I'm scared out of my mind. I came here to get some support because how do you tell your friends, even the closest ones you have, that your wife tried to kill herself. You don't. You just paste a fake smile on your face and go on.

OP, that doesn't clarify anything. Before she took 700 pills. Now she had 600 pills filled (for 6 mos @ 600 pills makes no sense either). Then you say she ingested 102 pills. I think you are still a troll.

[Anonymous]

If you think he's a troll, you need to STFU and move along. Just in case he is not a troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The doctor has just released her to come home tomorrow. I am in utter disbelief. This was by far her worst attempt, and she is just going home. I wanted her in inpatient, she fucking NEEDS inpatient. And they're sending her home. As happy as I am she is alive- and believe me I am deleriously happy- I don't want her at home right now. I am so afraid the next time neither of us will be so lucky.

Are they off their effing rocker? So sorry they're making such a bad judgement call. Is there another option? Even from a purely physiological point of view, she still needs monitoring, I think. Not to mention all the other levels at which this is a bad, bad decision.

I hope you can find a solution that is more adequate for your wife's circumstances.