He calls me every now and then; he sends me sms or emails. He always asks about my conditions, worrying about my solitary life and keeps on praying for me. He is such a nice best friend to me. You can see that from his behavior toward me. On the other time, he would scream at me, saying rude words (even though he said that those words randomly chosen for random people, so, he did not say those words to me) and crying. He would be someone else, not the nice person that I’ve been known for almost 10 years.
He’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a clinical condition that is characterized by the occurrence of one or more Manic Episode (when a person have abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least for 1 week) or Mixed Episodes (when a person experiences rapidly alternating moods –sadness, irritability, euphoria- accompanied by the symptoms of Manic Episode and Major Depressive Episode).
When he has his enjoyable days, he would be nice to everybody. Call them up, greet them and send them some gifts. Sometimes, through MSN, he will show me his design books and tell me stories about his favorite designers and their masterpieces. He also makes jokes on me, and sometimes the jokes are very silly, yet he can make me laugh. He also tells me how much he loves his mother, his sister and his close friends. He even supports me to keep on keeping up with my dreams. He knows a lot of my stories.
But when the stormy days come, he would be someone else. He would send me sms and it sounds very angry. Like a few days back, he sent me sms and said that he was very angry with the conditions around him. He had a project in which he had to use drilling machine. He was so afraid that he was almost hurt his fingers in that machine. He was so angry for not being able to use that machine. But, the cause was not just that. He was also angry to his own condition. He said that he was almost going back to ‘that small room’. That room refers to a condition in which he feels helpless, no one around him and nobody would ever love him. That condition comes and goes, without any notice and hurt him so bad.
Some people who do not know about his condition usually labeled him as a weirdo. Even some of his family were talking behind his back and spread the gossips to others. They said that my friend is a schizophrenic. That he’s crazy and won’t get any better, even with medication. One thing that makes me mad is the way they label someone with their own judgment and prediction. I talked to his aunty once, she insisted to call me up. She kept on telling me about his family history, in which I knew it long before she called me up, and kept on blaming his mother as the source of his disorder (the way my friend’s mother took care of him and so on). I tried to assure her that my friend is going to be alright with the right medication and acceptance from his surroundings, including her. The phone call went for about an hour and she never called me up again since then.
What I want to say is never ever label someone with something that you do not know. That label may hurt them so much and haunt them for the rest of their lives. Imagine if you are the one who get labeled by others. It’s like writing on your forehead, that you are having such disease and you have to face it for the rest of your life.
Just be careful with what you say…
My Writing Paper 
it is a burden and a source of frustration to the family, we usually see the sufferer as the one needing support and help but don’t usually see that the family needs similar support and knowledge about the disorder to go through.
one needs to make sure as well that the indo psychiatrist is prescribing the correct meds, they usually give patients sleeping pills rather than anticonvulsant/mood stabilising meds. Those doesn’t help with the condition but rather puts them to sleep (with a risk of death).