Bipolar Disorder During Adolescence: Clinical Features and Treatment
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[GUITAR PLAYING]
SAM TORMEY (SINGING): I've been up for a really long time, and I'm looking for time to let my hair down. I'm not the man that I used to be. Never again will I dance mystically.
LESLEY TORMEY: I really don't want him to define himself as being, you know, a mental health patient or even bipolar because that's not who he is. I mean, here is this perfectly healthy, brilliant [INAUDIBLE] student. And then the next thing you know, he's in a mental hospital. I mean, you would never know by just looking at him, but he's worked very hard to be where he is now.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SAM TORMEY: I almost hesitate to point out, like, some of the positives to this because there's undeniably, like, something—for example, I went to the Galleria and bought women's size four, I think, extra tight black jeans. And I was looking in the mirror. I didn't have any shoes on or my shirt, and I just ran through the Galleria, like sprinted through it. And it felt so amazing. I felt, like, on top of the world.
LESLEY TORMEY: He also was pretty psychotic. He thought he was some master computer that could fix everybody.
SAM TORMEY: I did have hallucinations. They were sort of like visions. Whenever I'd, like, sort of meditate or just, like, close my eyes and start thinking, and a movie would just start to unfold. And then I would switch to some crazy form of depression where I couldn't even move. I felt symptoms of both. I'd feel trapped and lonely from depression, but I'd also feel grandiose and have delusions from mania.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There was this one point where I just was so sad and so drained of energy from this problem that I literally just collapsed to the floor. And I had never felt that intensity of sadness before. It made me realize how bad life can get and how I think it can get so bad to where it's not even worth continuing.
SAM TORMEY (SINGING): Yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, I'm satisfied. And I recognize these feelings of mine are clouds in the sky shaped as pretty things. And when the wind blows, that's where we all go.
SAM TORMEY: Because at the time, I felt very responsible for my depression. But once you understand they come from chemicals and the situation, it's empowering because you realize, oh, I just need to change the situation and the chemicals. It becomes less paralyzing, and it becomes less personal.
LESLEY TORMEY: After he was on the lithium and certainly after a while, he was new and improved.
SAM TORMEY: It's like, most people, you know, have this wave of ups and downs, manic depressive people will have their ups and downs, and then, like, if you're triggered enough, it'll break that threshold level. And you'll go way up, and you'll come way down. So what I think that lithium does is it's basically like a barrier to where you can't break that threshold level.
LESLEY TORMEY: Now that he kind of understands what the medicine can do for him, I think he's really into it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SAM TORMEY: What I'd have to say to anybody going through this or anything similar to this is to not take this into your own hands. This is an issue that needs to be taken to professional help. Medicine and therapy are the professional help that's needed to truly address this.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]