Please I need advice to help my sister

[beautifulbritty712]

My sister has has bipolar symptoms her whole life, but has never been diagnosed. She has attempted suicide several times and been hospitalized, sometimes she is ok but her moods seem much more extreme than mine usually are and I have been diagnosed. After a time of calmness she started acting out and broke up with her bf, started drinking and partying when she had stopped drinking for a time. Her doc said she is trying to mimic my behavior, but I think this is real. They decided to try her out on geodon to see what happens, she has gotten so horrible! She is acting selfish and not at all her self, doing things my sister would never do to people. She recently did something pretty bad and the police are looking for her. I believe she will be charged with a felony, She stole over 700 dollars from someone I know she loves and spent it all in a day partying. Now the whole family wants her to go to jail, everyone is looking for her to tell the police where she is. I think being bipolar myself I can understand more than they do how hard it can be to use good judgement. I get manic sometimes and can't even remember what I did. My question is can it be possible for the geodon, an antipsychotic I believe, to cause this reckless behavior? Or sometimes I think maybe it made her feel numb so she started using other drugs to feel things which caused her to become manic? She is hiding out with her new bf, who we know is bipolar and is on parole right now, and I think they are making eachother's situations worse. She has not had a diagnoses but because of her history and the medication she just started taking do you think it's possible for her to get the charges lessened or dropped? I don't think this is her fault, I know she should be responsible for her actions but since nobody got hurt and if this is caused by the meds shouldn't she be able to just pay him back and get some community service or something? She just turned 18 and I think this is going to make her life even harder than it will already be if she gets a felony charge against her. Does anybody have experiences like this? Plz tell me anything I want to know what our options are before the police catch up with her!

PS- I do not know that she's using drugs, it's just something I've wondered.

[beautifulbritty712]

Thank you, I know she needs help but I just think it isnt fair this will be on her record her whole life, she just turned 18 last month. I know it will be hard to get a job with this kind of felony on her record. If she takes the geodon only sometimes and mixes it with alcohol, because I do know she's been drinking, it could cause her to act out of character? I was on geodon but I was so tired and slow all the time I stopped taking it. Maybe she stopped, can't this cause mania?

[jst4shanell]

She may not even be taking her medication.  Even if she is, if she's one drugs or alcohol, the meds won't work.  It could have the opposite effect.  I'm on Geodon.  I learned that the hard way, of course.  I know you want to protect your sister but she needs to learn from this and it might actually turn out to be the best thing for her.  It sounds like her boyfriend isn't a winner either and it might actually get her the help she needs.  

[Xila31]

I'm so sorry about your sister. I, too, am confused about why they say she is only mimicing you. I think that sometimes people tend to brush aside bipolar as a diagnosis because, for example, people with hypomania may not be as obvious. But this sounds like mania. I can understand some people act out for attention, but this does not sound like the case, esepecially with suicide attempts and hospital stays.

You say she is hiding, so I'm not sure how to help her. Since she does not have a diagnosis right now I don't know what will happen leagally. If she comes out of hiding and gets a lawyer then perhaps the lawyer can request a psychological evaluation.

[ILADVOCATE]

Geodon can be activating, that is it can make a person have trouble sleeping and feel speeded up but it generally doesn't cause mania. That said if she is not responding to it they can change it to another medication. Its an antipsychotic so perhaps she needs an antipsychotic and mood stabilizer as well. If she is using illegal drugs though that could cause extreme behavioral changes and potentially psychosis and make medication not work. I'm not sure why they said she is mimicking your behavior. I would not think that makes sense. If things are not working out perhaps you should speak to her psychiatrist with her.