Help! 20 yr sis with asp/bi-polar coming to live with me!

[HeimbergerHouse]

Hello, this is my first post. My sister is 20 (currently at a hospital for "cutting" herself), and she may be coming to live with me, my husband and three sons. At one point she was thought to have Asperger's, but has been diagnosed as bi-polar. Personally, after reading some posts about children with Asp, I think she fits more into that category. She definitely needs direction, and so do I in how to deal with her and get her life moving in the right direction. Can you offer any resources for dealing with an adult with these issues? She has very poor social behavior, and has alienated most of her friends. She was fired from a job she supposedly liked (bagging at a supermarket), for "inappropriate behavior" with two girls that work there. My sister will do things like tickle people for no reason, so I suspect it was something like that, and these girls said she made them feel uncomfortable. She recently underwent training through MRDD for job skills (filing, clerical), but she told me last night that she doesn't want to do that kind of work because at times it was too stressful trying to get all the numbers in the right places. Throughout school she was labeled as learning disabled, bordering on retarded. She can read like nobody's business, but I don't think she comprehends.

Physically - she has gone up and down with her weight, usually due to whatever drug she's currently on. Many ear infections as a child, traded for bladder and yeast infections as she got older. I strongly suspect she has a yeast overgrowth problem, which is contributing to her symptoms.

Any advice, resources, etc. would be most appreciated.

Jen

[journeymom]

Yikes!

She could have both Aspergers and bipolar. I have bipolar II. I investigated Aspergers for myself. The literature you can read about Aspergers includes a much broader range of people in its description than the professionals do. I went to an actual Aspergers support group one time and honestly, some of these people were much more like my understanding of autistic than Aspergers. I think the autistic/aspergers professional community is not up to speed with the rest of the community that actually lives with these syndromes.

The interaction between bipolar and aspergers: aspies are kind of socially oblivious, right? Well, one thing the medication I take for bipolar II does is slow down my brain enough that I can censor myself before I say/do something odd. The tickling you mentioned hit a nerve. I haven't done that, exactly, but similar things.

My favorite web site for psychiatric information:

Psycheducation

He links to a good web site about self injury:

No Shame Here

From my perspective as someone with a conclusive bipolar II diagnosis, I can definitly see how the overwhelming stress that dealing with aspergers and bipolar both could lead a person to self cutting.

If autism is at one end of the spectrum and "normal" or healthy is at the other end, then I'm a little to the left of normal, closer to aspergers, definitly. Even if the professional community doesn't recognize that this is possible.

Will your sister be under a doctor's care after she's released from the hospital? Is there a social worker the hospital can refer you to for education and support? Will your sister have medical insurance? I'm assuming that she's coming to live with you because she has no where else to live?