Jagger

Hi all,

My friend at work had a very bizarre psychosis of some sort. She is definately not the type to use drugs that I can tell.

However her behaviour over the past 3 weeks was absolutely crazy. She suddenly became more outgoing, aggressive and even bossy. She was very chatty and has dropped alot of weight. She was on a diet too.

She then started emailing nonsensical stuff to people, and even started interfering in a fellow employees marriage.

This all culminated in her barricading herself inside her office. She started saying that she wanted certain ethnicities out of the company, wanted the owner to leave the company.....she was rambling on about deleting countries from her computer....and insisting that her office was a country, and that people shouldnt cross the doorway as it was the border to her country.

She then got very angry with us when we were trying to help her and ran out of the office yelling that she was quitting. She refused to take her coat and said that if we tried to give her her coat, she would strip off her clothes.

She stormed out of the building very quickly and down the street so fast we lost track of her.

We phoned 911 but the police had already picked her up - she was running down a main road stripping off all her clothes. Needless to say the police took her to hospital.

Im hoping anyone could shed some light on this, are there types of drugs or pills that can cause such a psychosis in an otherwise normal person?

Thanks in advance

rose

Oh wow! Maybe she is taking something to loose weight. Some of these diet pills can be more than you ask for. For sure though something is up and hopefully they get to the bottom of it before she comes back to work and really it is in the best interest of the company to make sure, they can't have this going on, I would not feel very safe at work.

Rose

glitter

Sounds like a classic, classic bipolar manic episode/psychotic break. What is her age?

I have personal experience with this as I have two adult bipolar kids who during their first breaks in their early 20's behaved in kinda sorta the same way.

Having compassion for her rather than fear is the feeling evoked in me by the description of her event.

Jagger

Hi,

Thanks for your replies. They are assessing her so it will take many days.

She is about 32. I had noticed also that she had become quite concerned about her weight, even though she has a nice figure. She had also started wearing more outfits to make her look sexier and seems to be obsessing about finding a man. She has easily dropped 25 pounds in the last month or so.

glitter

Poor thing. At least she's in the right place - safe and hopefully getting the help she needs.

peggy125

My husband had a psycotic episode exactly a year ago this week. He has never taken drugs and had no history of mental illness. The experience was very similar to your friends. He personality changed dramatically over several week and he barely slept or ate. I saw some emails that he sent that were red flags but I didn't understand what I was dealing with. He fell apart right in front of me until it reached the crisis point and had what I would consider a psycotic episode. He was taken to the ER and released shortly after. Sadly the episode occurred while I was delivering our third child. His family dealt with the ER doctors and he ended up being released within less than 24 hours. My in laws got him in to a psychiatrist within hours of being released and he's been under his care ever since. After the 1st episode he recovered within 2 weeks and was back to work. Then after 3 months he feel into a deep, dark depression. This time it got worse and worse until he finally had to go on disability. He was off for about 3 months and again recovered pretty nicely. He's been functioning pretty well for the last few months. However, I worry all the time. He go up at 6:00 this morning and it really scared me. He always sleeps late and the only other period of time that he was able to get up early was when he was having the manic episode. At least now I think I could catch it earlier and would be able to get him to the doctor sooner to prevent a really big episode. I hope that your friend can get the help she needs and regain her reputation at work.

Jagger

Yes thank God the police found her before hurt herself. I had read somewhere that weight loss pills can sometimes behave like amphetamines, so naturally I was wondering if that had anything to do with it possibly. The weird part is the stripping of the clothes given her obvious preoccupation with her body these days. Perhaps that triggered it.

peggy125

My husband also took off his clothes in the hospital room while I was in labor. We were waiting for security to get there to take him to the ER when he stripped down. I don't know if this is common with a psycotic episode but I thought I'd mention it.

glitter

Could have been some type of amphetamine that triggered a mental illness sitting latent in her. For my son, his psychiatrist thinks this exact thing. My son was 20 years old at the time when he smoked a lot of pot. His behavior started changing over a couple of weeks and then he just lost it completely and thought the "military machine" was reading his writing (he's a senior in college with a creative writing major). He was convinced that the CIA was out to get him and got really paranoid and starting sending bizarre emails to his landlord about the "evidence" being found around and in his apartment building.

My daughter was in grad school (24 yrs old) when it happened to her. She never touched drugs. But her break came one night when she frantically showed up at the campus police department claiming she was being followed by "middle eastern men."

Just to let you know.....my daughter is 32 now and after a couple years of medication ups and down, is doing VERY well with an outstanding job and outstanding life.

After my son's break in May of this year we finally have nailed the correct medication for him. I'm so proud of him as he has been able to maintain his studies through all of this. It was sooooooo hard, but with the understanding of his professors last spring and really hard work by him, his therapist and his psychiatrist he will be graduating this May with his BA.

Jagger

Im glad your children are okay and that there is hope for my friend, that was a very scary thing to witness.