Regarding Josh’s Mental Health

fazikku said:
Gotta chime in; I have BPD (diagnosed by a doctor) and i can hardly recognize ANY legit BPD symptoms in Josh’s behaviour. schizophrenia, on the other hand, is a very likely illness for him to have since a lot of his antics and symptoms go well with schizophrenia’s criteria. just wanting people to know not to think people with BPD act like Josh does; i personally take huge offense in that. 
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EDITED: Miscommunication on my part.
( BPD is the acronym for borderline personality disorder, not bipolar disorder)

I mistakenly assumed that BPD is for bipolar disorder as the previous response posting was regarding depression and Josh.

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I didn’t mean any offence in my response regarding Josh’s conditions and I do take this topic very seriously so I apologize if I caused any unintended hard feelings.

To clarify, I left my assumptions vague between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder because I’m not in a place to diagnose exactly what Josh might have and I understand that there are several different types or combinations of these disorders that can cause crossovers of symptoms which are different in each person to person.

I completely believe in you saying that, Josh’s symptoms are very hard to relate to as a person with Bipolar,especially for people with Bipolar type 2 or cyclothymia which I assume you already know are the milder and the more common type that does not experience any psychotic symptoms.

However, I can’t simply cut to a conclusion of saying that Josh must not have bipolar, because bipolar people with severe mixed-episodes can experience psychotic symptoms as severe as Josh’s.

From what I understand, mixed-episodes-type is more likely to happen in individuals whose onset happened/started at adolescence like in Josh’s case.  

Not only that, in his medical record, he has history of depression and manic episodes which would prevent a simple diagnose of  schizophrenia due to the presence of mood disorder. The fact that Josh is completely off the pill during the entire game yet he appears to be in a normal or positive-hypo-manic state for the first half of the game makes it even more ambiguous for me because it seems to me like a case of an ’episode’ that happens more in bipolar, not schizophrenia.

My *guess*in detail is that he *could* have severe schizoaffective disorder (mixed-episodes biopolar) because Josh shows different episodes of normal to manic states (happens in bipolar) with the severe psychosis(more common in schizo). 

However, you’re absolutely right in saying that psychotic symptoms like what Josh had is not true to all people with Bipolar and

A LOT of people with Bipolar do not have psychotic symptoms at all. 

And these conditions are very manageable with the right treatment.

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Again, If I caused any trouble, I do apologize and thank you for chiming in to clarify.