In my experience, bipolar can be one symptom of larger brain problems.
You end up with symptoms of a lot of different mental disorders that have a different underlying cause than normal for those disorders.
For example, I have a rather severe impairment of executive function. I have a diagnosis of ADHD, but my internal experience doesn’t seem to match what I’ve read about other people with ADHD and none of the first or second line treatments for ADHD work on me.
I also have a significant overlap in the symptoms of autism, but I do not have the internal experience of someone who is autistic.
I developed some significant executive functioning issues over the past 15 years. The symptoms started shortly after I started taking bipolar 2 medications.
I suspected that it was from the APs, so I looked for research and found a few papers that showed links between APs and gray matter loss. So, I stopped taking the APs (the side-effects were really bad, anyway), but my mind hasn't really recovered though.
It's extremely frustrating. I have to constantly write 'to do' lists. And, I have to put my thinking down on paper. I used to be able to hold big models in my mind and just code. It's slowed down my productivity probably 70%.
You end up with symptoms of a lot of different mental disorders that have a different underlying cause than normal for those disorders.
For example, I have a rather severe impairment of executive function. I have a diagnosis of ADHD, but my internal experience doesn’t seem to match what I’ve read about other people with ADHD and none of the first or second line treatments for ADHD work on me.
I also have a significant overlap in the symptoms of autism, but I do not have the internal experience of someone who is autistic.