Jacqui Armstrong also spent years being treated for depression before receiving the correct diagnosis.<\/p>\n
The 64-year-old began treatment on various antidepressants from her teenage years and over the next three decades her depressions led to several hospital admissions and a suicide attempt, all while she worked as a teacher in a primary school then a nursery.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t even get up the stairs, I was just broken,” she said. “I just felt like a huge failure the whole time, thinking ‘why can’t I get well?’.”<\/p>\n
Jacqui said that during one episode, she was even given electroconvulsive therapy \u2013 a treatment that uses an electric current to induce a controlled seizure.<\/p>\n
But she said the signs of bipolar were always there.<\/p>\n
As well as frequent depressive periods, she experienced ‘hypomania’ episodes, spurts of unusually high energy, activity, or mood that were less severe than full mania. <\/p>\n
“I would suddenly feel like a confident person, and I had all these ideas, and I was very sociable, thinking how many things can I fit into my diary,” she said.<\/p>\n
“And then I would energise myself into a breakdown.”<\/p>\n
It was only during her final hospital admission for depression that a psychiatrist asked Jacqui if she’d ever experienced symptoms of hypomania. <\/p>\n
She was then assessed further and diagnosed her with bipolar II \u2013 more than 30 years after first seeking help for her mental health.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Kimberley, who had experienced a “full” manic episode that resulted in a break from reality, was diagnosed with bipolar I.<\/p>\n
Experts say bipolar II is even harder to diagnose because it involves more frequent depressions and the manic episodes are not as severe, which is why they are dubbed hypomania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacqui Armstrong also spent years being treated for depression before receiving the correct diagnosis. The 64-year-old began treatment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-626903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}