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Q: Is This From a Head Injury or Bipolar Disorder?
My son Matthew 23yrs old OU graduate in Industrial engineering Honor
student, says he fell and hit his head last July 15,2008,on the left side.
He says he was running across yard and feet went out from under him and and came
down with great force on raise cement knocking him out. Know one saw this but he
told some people shortly afterwards this accord.
He started slurring and lost his vision and after a 4 day period began to
hallucinate .
He seemed to get better and saw Neurologist was told to
go home and symptoms would go away in 3 to 6 months.
3 Days later he was sent home from work completely disoriented and having
delusions , seeing things that were not there ,extremely hyper spent a week in
local hospital , MRI EEG showed nothing, Had to take him to Houston to Methodist
Hospital, Again MRI, EEG, showed nothing a PET scan may have shown something in
Mid Brain.
His eyes would not respond to light, very small fixed pupils . Neurologist said
he had not ever seen anything like this but prescribed Aricept about 3 times the
normal dosage for a alzhimer patient . His vision came back in about a week.
Mood up and down ,anger, feeling of grandiose , his is only opinion , prescribed
800 MG a day of Seroguel, seems to of leveled of after 7 months seeing
psychiatrist who thinks he is Bipolar. As you can imagine lots of other things also
happened. I believe he had head trauma. But not sure of Bipolar .
I know this is especially hard thing to ask since 2 Neurologist have said they
did not know what it was or is.
What do you think?
Dear DJ’ –
Just one thought to offer here, as you already understand that: a) this is
complicated, hard to figure out; and b) I have only what you’ve written to go
by.
That
thought: just make sure you don’t get stuck thinking “this isn’t bipolar
disorder, this is a head injury”. That’s a false split. He didn’t have bipolar
disorder before the injury but he has manic symptoms now. So first you have to
see that the symptoms are controlled (obviously he can’t do well unless that’s
done). Then later will come the question – when he’s done well with symptoms
fully controlled for at least several months, preferably over a year; I hope –
as to whether he needs to stay on whatever treatments got him well, or whether
he might dare taper them, one at a time, very slowly (e.g. 6 months per
each treatment).
Related
thought: since the early symptoms included visual hallucinations, that might be
a really tiny clue (and might also be a red herring, but I’d factor it in were I
running the show). Visual hallucinations are unusual in bipolar mania (auditory
hallucinations are not; they’re common, though that’s poorly understood by a lot
of people, including even some psychiatrists). Visual hallucinations might
signal a more “neurologic” kind of problem here (the neurologists might agree;
they were trying to treat this instead of saying “take your son to a
psychiatrist, this is not our territory”, which they would probably say if
someone showed up with auditory hallucinations and grandiosity).
By
“neurologic” I mean that the brain disturbance might be more like epilepsy
(abnormal firing of neurons) or a stroke (some damaged neurons); versus bipolar
disorder, which is thought to be more like a mismatch between growth and atrophy
control systems, not cell damage as such, or out-of-control neuron firing.
And if
that’s true, it’s more “neurologic” in this sense, that might mean a slight
shift is warranted in choosing among treatments (this will only be necessary if
he’s not getting better; if that’s already happening, ignore this). Or at least
I’d be thinking about a slight shift in how I rated the options, as follows:
usually the options for psychotic mania include “antipsychotics”. Often these
are relied upon heavily, in fact. Seroquel is one, and your son’s dose is in the
antipsychotic range (it can be used at lower doses to target bipolar
depression). That’s fine, if it works. If it doesn’t, and here’s the shift, I’d
lean toward the anti-seizure medications also used in bipolar disorder. The two
main candidates to consider are valproate (Depakote; divalproex generic) and
carbamazepine (and perhaps it’s close cousin oxcarbazepine, which has fewer
risks but may have less clout also). Although another anticonvulsant,
lamotrigine, is also often used, it does not have anti-manic effects, at least
not directly, we think, so in your son’s case it would not be as obvious a
choice.
The point
of all that is that sometimes people get focused on the psychotic symptoms
(delusions, hallucinations) and think they need an “antipsychotic”. Even the
name rather suggests this is an obvious medication to use, right? But
antipsychotics might be the best for your son; or might not be such an obvious
choice, in his case, because: a) some people hate the way they feel on these
medications if they don’t really need the antipsychotic effect, they just need
an antimanic effect (which the antipsychotics do provide, but they also have a
direct effect on thought processes, usually making people feel like it’s harder
to think properly compared to their usual normal); and b) for a more
“neurologic” kind of mania, they may be actually a bit off target, whereas the
anticonvulsants – because their target is abnormal neuron activity – is closer
to the mark.
For
example, or to carry this logic just a little further, an EEG that’s normal
doesn’t necessarily mean there is no epileptic activity taking place. The EEG
is not a perfect test. It can miss some. Deep in the temporal lobe – the side of
the brain one might injure by falling on the side of one’s head – is known to be
particularly poorly scanned by scalp electrodes used in the standard EEG. So if
an anticonvulsant can be used just on the basis of it’s known anti-manic
effects, there’s a potential here for getting two for one: the manic symptoms
and any possible underlying seizure-like activity that didn’t happen to turn
up on the EEG.
Tricky
logic. I hope you can see why I thought it was worth writing this all out.
Sometimes psychiatrists are a little slow to come around to this way of
thinking. They see psychosis and they want to use an antipsychotic, end of
story. Well, that’s my point of view anyway. Now, whether this applies to your
son or not is a different question, one which I can’t really know. But now you
know it; just in case you need it (that is, just in case you need to wonder out
loud, if things aren’t going well, “you know, I heard that the EEG sometimes
misses deep epileptic activity; in other words, it gives a false negative test
result? And if that was the case here, maybe using an anticonvulsant that could
treat manic symptoms would be worth considering just in case it could hit both
targets?”)
I hope
things proceed more simply than that. Good luck with the process –
Dr. Phelps
Published May, 2009
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