Coping with Bipolar Disorder

On April 14, 2005, the negative thoughts took over—Andrea tried to commit suicide. "I went home and ran a tub of water and got in it, and I had gotten a knife from the kitchen, and I proceeded to slit my wrists," she says. "The phone rang, and I was in the process of…. I was cutting it at the time that [my daughter] called, and I stopped."

After bandaging up her wrists, Andrea told her husband what she had done. "He tried to convince me, 'Andrea, you're not a bad mom.' And I listened to him, and I tried to take all that in, and I thought, 'I can, I need to turn my thoughts around,'" she says. "But they kept racing in my mind, and it was so negative. I just felt the weight of the world was on me."

That same night, Andrea stayed up late working on a costume for Garrett to wear to school the next day—but she just couldn't finish it. Instead, she kept Garrett home from school, saying they didn't feel well. "I just couldn't get it together, and the voices started coming that he would be better off," she says. "And I just thought his life, things were going to be so bad, and the voices just kept getting louder and louder."