No, the underlying cause for Ripley's character's manic depression is NOT something stressful that happened to her. Sure, it could have been--and in the context of this play, probably was--TRIGGERED by a stressful event in her life, but the cause of bipolar disorder is in fact probably different genes acting together to create a certain situation in the brain. A study published last month even found that schizophrenia and bipolar share a common genetic cause--and pretty much everybody I know who has it inherited it from a parent or grandparent.
Not trying to pick a fight here, but it's really important that people understand that bipolar is not just a reaction to trauma, it, or at least a predisposition for it, is something the person is born with ...that's why the anti-medication attitude in the NYC production didn't make a lot of sense. There's just so much misunderstanding about mental illness...which is one of the reasons Next to Normal is so welcome. Oh, I apologize, what I said DID totally come across like I was saying that, but that's actually not what I meant haha. I was just too vague because I was trying to avoid spoilers
*WARNING: I don't explicitly give away spoilers here, but for purposes of explaining, it does kind of give a lot away, so if you haven't seen the show and don't want to be spoiled, DON'T READ FURTHER*
Yeah, I kind of consider it to be the fact that she never DEALT with the trauma that happened. Not that the trauma
itself caused the problems. But I think... instead of actually dealing with it from the get go, she kind of suppresses everything, so that over the years it builds up into a very real chemical situation in the brain.
I totally get what you mean- I think that people with bipolar disorder DO have a certain biological predisposition to it to begin with. But I would just argue that, when something traumatic happens that triggers that chemical reaction in the brain, I would think it COULD probably be much more
manageable if addressed and treated right away, instead of allowing it to build up to the point that Diana does in the show. So, basically I personally feel like if she'd gotten help in dealing with her grief from the get go, her bipolar condition might have been manageable mostly with therapy, and without the use of much medication, if any. But because she didn't truly deal with it for so long, that's why her condition became as severe as it did.
And I think, on that note, that's a large part of the reason that she ends up walking away from treatment, if only for the meantime, in the end- because yes, she has a chronic illness (and now there's a whole part in the end where Dr. Madden reminds her of exactly that, and she acknowledges it), but treating the chronic illness is not going to help her deal with the things she needs to deal with emotionally in order to
fully get better. So the way
I personally view the ending the way it is now, is not that she's walking away from any kind of medical treatment forever. She's simply taking a break from it so she can properly deal with her grief, and
then she can go back and actually sort out the rest, rather than just having medicine prescribed to her to cover up the real problem.
Sorry, I know that's UBER long, but... yeah, that's essentially what I meant before haha. Again, I was just trying to vague and I realize now that it came off sounding like I thought the trauma itself was the cause :)
I don't need a life that's normal. That's way too far away. But something next to normal would be okay. Something next to normal is what I'd like to try. Close enough to normal to get by.
