Question

Jerry is a 35-year-old man who is studying horticulture part-time at his local TAFE and working part-time for the government in a forestry role. Jerry has had bipolar disorder since his late teens but was only officially diagnosed three years ago. Recently, Jerry has started staying up longer during the night working on his assignments, and for the past five days, he has not slept at all. For the past month, Jerry has only been sporadically taking his prescribed medication. Last week Jerry’s neighbors made a complaint to the body corporate in the unit where Jerry lives after he did some gardening in his courtyard at 3 am, followed by mowing the communal areas at 4.30 am. Jerry thinks his neighbors need to ‘chill’ and that he was actually in the middle of a breakthrough that could result in reversing global warming. Jerry believes that his neighbors should mind their own business and stop interfering with his creativity, and he cannot understand why they are confused by his ideas. Jerry believes he is on the ‘verge’ of a major discovery. While he was writing his latest assignment, his research helped him unearth a discovery that will reverse global warming, resulting in him making millions of dollars. When the morning came, Jerry quit his job. Jerry’s major concern now is what will happen if he accidentally reverses global warming too much and the temperature becomes too cool. While he is worried about this, he believes everything will probably be okay because it all comes down to the word ‘land’ and it will ‘even out’, but he does want to seek clarification on this. Jerry is reassured because people live in Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, and Poland and these are all cold climates. It will all balance out because there are equal numbers of countries in warmer climates that have the word ‘land’ in them, too, such as Swaziland, Thailand, New Zealand, and the Falklands. Outcomes being ‘even’ is of great importance to Jerry. Jerry’s father Paul visited him a few days ago for dinner and is worried about him. Despite Paul making dinner, Jerry couldn’t sit still long enough to eat it. Jerry doesn’t want to talk about the possibility that he may be unwell again, because, he says, ‘It’s not like last time, Dad.’ Yesterday, Jerry attended the Polish embassy requesting they work with him on his project. He demanded to see the ‘most senior person here’ because they would be the only one who could understand his discovery. Both the Thai and Irish embassies had refused to return his calls. Jerry became upset when a representative from the Polish embassy exports department would not meet with him. Jerry was talking rapidly and loudly, and the staff could not follow the topic of his conversation. Jerry became irritated when staff didn’t provide the information he wanted and eventually security was called. Jerry was taken to his local hospital for assessment and later admitted.

Q. What are the risk factors? STATIC: Risk factors that cannot change EXTERNAL DYNAMIC (risk factors that can change) INTERNAL DYNAMIC (risk factors that can change)

can you please give examples of static, external dynamic, and internal dynamic factors from the above case study?

Q. Does Jerry have any protective factors? if so, what are they?

thank you...

Answer 1

Factors that may increase the risk of developing bipolar disorder or act as a trigger for the first eppisode include,

• Having a first degree relative such as a partner of sibling with bipolar disorder
• Periods of high stress such as the death of a lovved one or other traumatic evvent
• Drug or alcohol abuse

Classification of risk factors in above case

1. In above case study mental stress was affected by Jerry we can consider as this is the static risk factor.
2. In internal dynamic factos are less sleep and history of bipolar disorder.
3. Exrernal dynamic factor he worried about his discovery how people react in that.

proctecting factors include good coping strategies,good social support networks, effective communication skills and etc. In the case of Jerry utulises protective factors like good coping strategies and good social support networks like hospital.