Armed Forces

Anyone here actively serving in the armed forces?

[Xila31]

No, I thought people with bipolar could not serve.

[BeeKeeper]

They can't, if someone knows you're BiPolar, or you are being treated with medication.

[paranoid_cataclysm]

I read that one reason you cannot join with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia is because they confiscate all medicines you take and force you off of them when you start boot camp.  Of course there's also the fact that my friend suffered chemical induced psychosis several years ago and they refused to let him join just because of that... if you've ever experienced psychosis then it's a big no to you which with bipolar disorder psychosis can be an issue.  Firearms and psychosis mix about as good as alcohol and psych meds to be honest.

[Xila31]

I always thought the big reason was emotional instability + war = total emotional breakdown costing the lives of self and fellow soldiers. That was just a theory.

I can see how psychosis would be a bad thing for a soldier to have as well.

[paranoid_cataclysm]

I dunno they have soldiers in the military who are suffering from depression and are suicidal so I'm not sure.  I think it depends on the person's stability while I don't know for sure why psychosis is a flat out no even if it was a one time thing several years ago.  I would think what you said would be true.

[Xila31]

Hmmm... Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it is the psychosis.

But I can see that psychosis could be a danger because you are seeing/hearing things that are not there. So if you're on a patrol or something you might see enemies that are not really there or hear commands from a commander that doesn't exist. That would be bad. I guess it is a better safe than sorry approach?

[paranoid_cataclysm]

lol yeah I would tell recruiters that I had stuff like that going on, asking what they would do with me in those specific examples and they would leave me alone.  Of course I wasn't lying but I think it's kind of funny we both thought up the same examples.  I was thinking maybe it had to do with the link between stress and psychosis getting worse easily due to it but I thought stress also made depression and mania worse.  Sometimes it doesn't make sense how they do things in organizations.  If I ran it myself personally I would send people home who were starting to get too depressed or manic, especially suicidal at all, because that's just a bad situation and a risk to everyone including the person suffering that.  I remember being told they screen you for depression and anxiety first but an army psychiatrist has to make the final call (from a person in the military who I asked specifically) and some recruiting places are corrupt like the one here and recruit people anyway with pre-existing conditions which they should of never been recruited for in the first place if what my family member who is legally blind even with glasses and got recruited anyway says is true.  They told me also just if you're interested in the information that PTSD is another immediate discharge but again I'm sure this doesn't always happen either.  If psychosis is present during mania or depression at any rate, they are automatically decided that they are severe which if you have severe mania and/or depression I'm sure is automatically a no.

[Xila31]

I'm more than sure that soldiers with PTSD are sent back into the war more often than not, especially in war time. It is heartbreaking. I'm sure there are a lot of corrupt or loop hole people out there, sending people who shouldn't go. I mean,  a system so big can't possibly be flawless.

I didn't sign the "don't call me" sheet for the recruitments when I was a teen. I just figured it was easy to say no, right? Well I think something was wrong with me when the Navy called. I was on a medication, and it did say on the bottle not to stay in direct sunlight for more than a half hour. So when this woman called I told her I couldn't join the Navy because I was taking a medicine that would make me burst into flames if I was in the sun too long. LOL.... I remember then thinking something like, "That'll show her!" That's the only one I remember, so the others must have been more normal.