Bipolar psychosis: a Symposium

                        IS MY CHILD BIPOLAR? In a state of considerable distress, parents frequently ask this question to child psychiatrists. The distress is exacerbated by the current assumption that bipolar... [ view full abstract ]

                        IS MY CHILD BIPOLAR?

In a state of considerable distress, parents frequently ask this question to child psychiatrists. The distress is exacerbated by the current assumption that bipolar disorders are transmitted genetically; and very often they extend this assumption of genetic transmission to all major psychiatric problems encountered in a family member. They wonder if they have been bad parents to transmit their genes, creating a bad family.

What we can be sure of is that parental guilt and shame interfere with the parents freedom in the raising of their children.

 How can we give them back hope and creativity, how can we rid them of the bad omen of the genetic witch?

 A far better tool is to focus on the transgenerational means of transmission of trauma. This empowers both the parents and the therapist and it is based on numerous studies and neurophysiologic findings. Parents are assisted in an important task of digesting past traumas so that they can allow their children to build good emotional and affective  regulation and the family become resilient and warrior like. This is a much better identity with which to support a child’s life.

 I will give a clinical example from a family I have been following for 15 years using several therapeutic tools within a framework of psychoanalytic understanding.  We have tracked a disorganized attachment pattern over five generations, tangled with abandonments, PTSD from wars, violence, sexual and emotional abuse and made meaningful a mother’s ‘crazy’ behaviour. The latter made sense in the context of an abnormal situation.  The work allowed five children to move forward in their now young adult lives