So…. A week ago I finally had a (phone) appointment with a mental health NP after desperately calling around 2 months earlier to get evaluated for ADHD and hopefully get some help before I lost my job due to my inability to stay focused enough to be on top of things like I should and an insanely rough patch in my personal life. Anyway, in 30min of conversation/condensed history she recognized I was manic and also diagnosed me with bipolar and probable ADHD (but she said we have to stabilize my mood first before addressing the ADHD). I didn’t even realize I was manic as it didn’t seem as severe as past episodes, which still took a few days to realize, and I thought I was just getting back to “normal” after a severe and prolonged bout of deep deep depression. 

I have never felt so heard by a medical professional in my life, I cried with relief after we hung up. Although I’d suspected for many many years I was bipolar I didn’t know how to bring it up with any primary care dr I’ve had and always just ended up with antidepressants which had various results, none of which were positive/helpful.

So she started me on Lithium, 150mg for a week then up to 300mg, with a follow up and bloodwork 2wks later which I failed to schedule because that’s apparently too much adulting. I’ve been reading so many posts here about Lithium and I’m cautiously hopeful. But now I seem to be in some sort of mixed episode with the depression side being more dominant. Is this fairly typical? It seems most people here are in the 600-900mg range so I kind of don’t think it’s having a significant impact yet. 

I don’t know why I’m posting or if I even had a point but any advice and/or experiences would be much appreciated, especially in regards to dealing with both bipolar and ADHD together.