Understanding Bipolar Disorder

After Exclusive: Did Bipolar Disorder Drive a Mother to Kill her Child? aired, Pat Roeller was one of the thousands of viewers who wrote to The Oprah Show with a story of her own. Pat's son Chris suffers from bipolar disorder and she fears what will happen if he does not receive proper care. "The greatest fear I have is that I'll lose him completely, and he'll die before somebody helps me save him," Pat says. "There's nights that I'll just sit up in the middle of the night and I'll be having a panic attack and I'll just cry and pray, 'Oh God, please send somebody to help me.'"

Back when Chris was a young boy, Pat says he was a great kid—a swimmer, Boy Scout and ball boy for the Indiana Pacers. "He just smiled a lot and he just lit up a room with the way he smiled," Pat says.

But when Chris reached his mid-20s, Pat says he began showing signs of bipolar disorder. "He was like Jekyll and Hyde, and it wasn't the boy that I ever knew. His personality changed. He just struggled. I mean, he tried so hard to be normal, and it just wasn't there."