That won’t help. There’s hundreds of thousands (nearing or exceeding a million) people like this in the USA alone. If that worked, it would be widely practiced.

These mental illnesses break the ability of an individual to choose to do what’s best in terms of medication, treatment, and lifestyle. The illness makes one not want to be properly medicated.

Someone can be consistent with their treatment and lifestyle for many months, but it just takes one trigger and a couple days off medications to lose all progress.

> That won’t help.

While I agree with the rest of your comment, I want to gently challenge this specific statement, as someone who has to take a powerful med (lithium) to avoid relapsing into mania with psychosis.

I was so extremely reluctant to regularly take meds, and lapsed in and out of mania for a few years. The main thing that got me to stick with lithium, and a major driver in me staying on them today, is grokking how deeply destructive mania is to all the relationships and other good things in my life.

I'm not saying we should shame mentally ill people, but part of treatment should be helping them understand & agree that permanent treatment is in their own best interest. Easier said than done, of course... it took years for me.

Thank you for sharing these insights. The whole problem space feels so intractable, and all options seemingly inhumane in their own ways, so it’s very helpful to hear from someone whose had success working though it.

> The illness makes one not want to be properly medicated.

The medications do that too. The side-effects are horrific.

I doubt this would work. When a neurotypical person is confronted with their actions, you usually get one of four results:

1. Justify what they did.

2. Dismiss it.

3. Ignore it.

4. Deny it happened.

Note that change their behavior isn't on that list. :(

This is such a defeatist attitude.

I'm bipolar I, and I take lithium for it. Being confronted with my actions over and over and over and over again was a big part of what got me to start taking meds.

The over and over is important. A lot of people do get the hint eventually. It's hardly as simple as showing a video.

True. Fair enough.

What kind of lithium do you take? I have heard that the prescribed doses can be pretty sedating or brutal but there are also people advocating for very tiny doses of lithium in a different form that is similar to what is found in some natural wells. Could be completely pseudoscience but it seemed interesting

Lithium carb pills, at the lower end of the standard therapeutic range. There are a range of side effects, luckily for me not severe enough to impact my day to day--the most noticable one is just being thirsty all the time. We'll see if that stays true as I age, though... kidney damage is a big risk down the road.

And yup, there's some newer research about the long term benefits such as lowering alzheimer's risk, which is a nice silver lining :) My doctors have mentioned it, so probably not pseudoscience.

They are not talking about the patients. Bipolar ppl are neurodivergent

I took their comment as "nt people don't usually change so why would you expect nd people to?" and I wanted to point out that nd people can indeed change, regardless of whether nt people can.

>neurotypical

You mean the opposite of that?

No, I meant neurotypical. I guess I could have said "normal" or "average". It's also culturally dependent, so maybe I should have just said Americans.

My understanding is that she is relatively aware. I don't know about the video part.