Psych – 10k Hit
Posted on Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 at 10:58 pm.Recently a patient came in who had reached a breaking point with his family; he felt they were being totally ungrateful for how great of a father he was, and he had had enough. He stopped taking his medications, and broke down and eventually brought himself to the hospital.
During my interview, he had explained how he had bought most of his children cars, and that he had a lot of money and always treated them well. He was very proud of how successful he was during his whole life, always running different businesses and doing well with them. I guess it was no surprise that he had a known diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder (type 1). These patients have periods of multiple days where they can go without sleep and have unlimited energy and grandiose thoughts. There was actually an article *in the New York Times this week about how these people can harness their ailment for success (although they refer to BPD type 2).
What was interesting about this patient was that prior to his admission to the unit, he had apparently attempted to pay someone to kill him for 10,000 dollars, since he did not want to do it himself.