Growing up with a bipolar parent: ‘When I came home from school, I didn’t know if my mother was still alive’

when he hears Eva, get up On the radio, Julien Carpentier has anxiety. Nothing to do with Julie Pietri’s lyrical flights. It just reminds him of his mother, who during her manic attacks thought she was Eve and therefore danced with life. That said, some may find it funny. The director freed himself from this painful memory by recreating it in the scene My mother’s lifeA multi-award-winning film inspired by his own story was released on March 6. Or a thirty-year-old who sees the re-entry into his life of his bipolar mother, who quietly escaped from a mental hospital and whom he hasn’t seen in two years.

This woman (played by Agnes Jauy), as sunny and uncomfortable as she is in jewels as flashy as her red coat, has stopped treatment and is entering a manic phase. “Hey, it’s still going on, but you know how it ends”Tells a young grandmother, who was sheltered by her mother and where she threw herself into an epic couscous with losses and noise. In front of this funny and whimsical fiftysomething, actor William Lebghili’s black gaze and his body language, like an animal ravaged, says it all. Among those close to bipolar people, we do not revel in our parent’s joy with impunity. This is the first shock of the coming earthquake.

Julien Carpentier was one such invisible child. Quietly and quietly. Who has to constantly adapt to the “mood” of the parent. “Children who are forgotten and who forget themselves”according to the formula of Thierry Baube, head of the Department of Child Psychiatry at Avicenna Hospital (Bobin). They are the collateral damage of mental illness. But in order to understand the impact on loved ones, we still need to know what we are talking about and break the fantasies about “madness”, the atmosphere. Someone flew over the cuckoo’s nest. But also ban the instrumentalization of the term (no, ups and downs don’t make you bipolar).

Between 1% and 2.5% of people in France suffer from chronic bipolar disorder. According to the FondaMental Foundation. Although there are several types, this psychological illness is characterized by periods of hyperactivity and exaltation, which lead to a feeling of omnipotence. These manic phases (hypomania), which can last several months, alternate with equally long severe depressive phases, which sometimes lead to suicide (incidence is 10 to 20% worldwide, according to the WHO). The higher you go in the manic phase, the harder it will be to fall. with serious consequences, especially on the financial level (forced purchases, consumer credit, payments to third parties) and professional (dropping out of studies, resigning from the position, dismissal, implementation of unrealistic projects).