By Lisa McGregor
As a teenager, Nic Newling suffered from a crippling mental illness that his psychiatrist Professor Gordon Parker said was about “as severe as it could possibly be”.
Now 28, Nic leads a full life: he has a girlfriend, a job and reckons he is “more stable than most of my friends who don’t have bipolar”.
So how did he come back from the brink?
Nic is one of the lucky ones.
Professor Parker, founder of the Black Dog Institute, diagnosed Nic with bipolar disorder four years into his illness.
That diagnosis and its treatment plan set him on the road to recovery.
By contrast, Australians with bipolar disorders on average wait a staggering 10 years or more before getting a diagnosis, if they get one at all.
This is particularly so for bipolar II, which Professor Parker said was less understood than bipolar I.
“Many health practitioners have little experience with bipolar II and are therefore reluctant to diagnose it and this leads to unsatisfactory management,” Professor Parker said.
Bipolar I and II are both characterised by highs and lows of mood, but bipolar I is more extreme, with sufferers experiencing psychosis and often ending up in hospital.
Bipolar II, where there is no psychosis, is more common but sufferers are often not diagnosed.
Nic’s illness came on when he was 13.
“It started out as feeling sad and feeling anxious and then it sort of moved into this weird sort of not grasping reality properly,” Nic said.
The condition got worse and Nic had violent thoughts, telling his mum Jayne Newling, “I want to kill people”.
“It was just like living a nightmare”, recalls Nic, “I wasn’t in control of my own mind … I was scared of my own thoughts.”
“There were days where Nic just did not leave his bedroom … and it was days on end,” recalls older brother Ben Newling.
Over the next four years, doctors diagnosed Nic with depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia.
Nic had suicidal thoughts, spent time in psychiatric wards, took an array of medications and even underwent electroconvulsive therapy, a treatment reserved for the most extreme cases.
However neither the therapy or the pills worked, and the debilitating nature of the illness forced Nic to drop out of school.
Looking back Nic feels some doctors did not ask him the right questions.
“With specialists there’s a bit of a confirmation bias that can happen … he’d ask certain questions and I’d just say, ‘Yeah, that sounds like something I experience’, so I’m kind of led down this path of thinking I had something that I didn’t,” Nic said.
Professor Parker, who met Nic when he was 15, agrees.
“It’s troubling that anybody with a reasonably fixed set of symptoms can when they see one practitioner get it diagnosed as A, see another get it diagnosed as B,” Professor Parker said.
Part of the problem is that the symptoms of bipolar occur in other mental illnesses.
Professor Parker diagnosed Nic with bipolar II when he was 16.
Nic had become suicidal and was under observation in a locked psychiatric ward when Professor Parker visited and witnessed Nic having a manic high and this confirmed his suspicion of bipolar.
For Nic’s father, Phil Newling, it was a “champagne cork moment”.
“We were elated,” said Nic’s mother Jayne.
“We were so relieved that finally someone told us what was wrong with our son.”
Nic fights back and pledges to help others do the same
Nic followed a holistic treatment program which included medication, education and a wellbeing plan.
Professor Parker said understanding the illness and its mood swings is vital, as is a healthy lifestyle which involves no drugs, moderate alcohol, lots of sleep and even fish oil.
Over the next few years, Nic improved, slowly but surely.
“Getting better after that long period of time … that’s where I realised that I’ve got a future and I want to have a future,” Nic said.
Professor Parker said Nic’s case was unusual in its severity, early onset and early diagnosis but he was confident Nic’s story does offer hope for others.
“When I see somebody whose bipolar disorder has come on at a young age, I’ve been struck by the likelihood that they’re just going to get better and better with time,” Professor Parker said.
He believes this is due partly to medication but also the fact that the brain is maturing.
Today Nic is on a low dose of medication and says he has not had a high or a low in years.
“I’m totally confident Nic has got on top of his mood disorder,” Professor Parker said.
Nic now works at the Black Dog Institute where he runs its adolescent website BITE BACK.
He is also an advocate for mood disorders and speaks in high schools about mental health issues.
“I just know how hard it was in school for me so if I can change that for others, I’d be crazy not to,” Nic said.
For Professor Parker, Nic’s recovery is “absolutely wonderful, it’s what we are in the profession for”.
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