Elisa Lam Case | Could Bipolar Disorder Really Have Caused Her Death?

Today we're going to be discussing the Elisa Lam case, specifically looking at whether or not bipolar disorder could really have caused the tragic accident. Now, for those of you who maybe aren't familiar with this case, Elisa Lam was a young college student from Canada traveling alone. I think sort of kind of in her mind, it was just a sightseeing, excuse me, take pictures. She was a blogger and she went to la. It was one of the stops on her trip. And at when she was in Los Angeles, she stayed at the Hotel Cecil. And this hotel is known for lots of bad things happening there. In fact, Netflix has just released a series all talking about the Cecil Hotel, specifically featuring the Lisa Lam case. And just looking at all the sinister things, the Netflix document really as really is as much about the hotel as it is the Elisa Lam case. In this particular video, we're going to look at her mental health diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Now, there is proof that she was diagnosed. What's the word? She was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder before she ever went on this trip. In fact, she wrote about it in some of her blogging that she did on Tumblr and some other social media sites. And there's a lot of evidence that when she was on this particular trip during her days in Los Angeles, that she was experiencing a manic episode. So I thought what might be helpful is to really sort of explain in a practical kind of way what that means, because I think that bipolar disorder is one of those really misunderstood, sometimes overused kind of diagnoses. I hear a lot of people use the diagnoses to describe somebody that's moody. Like, they'll say, oh, their mood changes all the time. You just don't even know how they're going to be from one second to the next. They're all over the place. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean someone's bipolar. In fact, with bipolar disorder, people's moods do change, but that usually takes a pretty good long period of time. Let me explain a little bit more about what I mean. So bipolar disorder used to be called manic depression. So if you've heard that term before, it's the same thing. They just change the terms every now and then, I think, to make us feel fancy. I don't know why. So people sort of alternate between these manic phases, which we're going to talk about, and these depression phases. Most people know what depression is, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about that. But I find that most people don't really have a good idea about what mania is. And since that seems to be the case about what was going on with Elisa Lam, I thought we would take some time and really dissect that down. I'm going to give you the official DSM 5 criteria for a mania episode. But I'm also trying to break it down to you in sort of real talk, reality. Most of you know that I am a addiction counselor, but I'm also a licensed professional counselor, which means I'm trained in mental health and addiction. And prior to opening my private practice, I worked in a. An acute care psychiatric hospital for almost 10 years. And in this acute care psychiatric hospital, they had units for substance abuse. They had units for mood disorders where you would see people struggling with depression, maybe having suicidal thoughts. They had units for geriatrics, adolescents, and chronic sort of mental. Severe mental illness is what I would call it. And so pretty commonly you would see people in the hospital being hospitalized because of either a really severe acute depression episode or really severe acute manic episode. And so it's. When you've been there and you've seen what mania looks like, you get a whole different picture. You're like, oh, that's a whole different something else than somebody who's just hyper, right? Because sometimes people think manic just means they're kind of hyper and kind of excitable and have energy and stuff. That's maybe part of it, but it's really a lot further than that. And so I think once we get into describing this, you're going to have a clearer picture about what that means. Now, if you have some personal experience with this, or a loved one, or you have a loved one or a friend with some personal experience with this, I definitely want to hear from you because I think you can help other people understand better in a real practical kind of way what this disorder looks like, what the person who has it goes through and what maybe family and friends can do to either help or maybe what they can stop doing that's not helpful. That's sometimes just as helpful. It's just stop doing certain things. Right? So mania, basically, it's kind of like the opposite of depression, right? It's an elevated mood. It can, once it gets elevated to a certain point, look pretty irritable. So at first, when mania first sort of starts, the person has more energy and they're more social and they might be more talkative, and for the most part, they feel a lot better. And even the people around them start to think, oh, they're better. You know, they're in a Good mood, they're back to their normal self. But that mood continues to go up and it kind of passes that sweet spot right there and keeps going past that. And then you get into mania. Now a core feature of mania, this is one of the real sort of differentiating things that I ask a lot of questions about when I'm trying to determine this is the sleep. When people are manic, they tend to have a decreased need for sleep. Now what I mean by decreased need is they may not sleep at all or they may sleep a couple of hours at night. And it's not like when you have like insomnia, when you're really tired, but you just can't go to sleep. It's like you don't need to sleep. It's like a nevermind, I'm going to stay up all night and work on my Harley in the garage for a week kind of energy. It's like you don't need to sleep. And as someone goes for those days without sleep, that's when things can get really dangerous and you can get into some of those more severe symptoms of mania. Now during this elevated mood, you often see an inflated self esteem. And when you look at it clinically, they call it grandiosity. And so a lot of times when people are manic, they will feel almost invincible or larger than life. They may do really risky things because they feel so invincible. They're usually more talkative. When I worked at the psych hospital, we used to put in people's charts all the time. We would call it being hyperverbal. And this is probably the most notable symptom to me is now not everyone that's manic has this. Elisa Lam definitely had some hyperverbal stuff going on because the people that interacted with her, like there's some people at a bookstore she visited who gave police some information. They talked about, well, she seemed really up and friendly and talkative. But my guess is it was a little bit beyond just friendly and talkative. Sometimes when people are in a manic episode, they can have this almost like this pressured speech. And I remember when I used to work in the hospital, we would go in and we would have to do these psychosocial evaluations. And when I would go into the room with someone who was in a manic phase, it would be pretty evident right from the get go and I would just like, oh no, I'm never gonna get out of here. Because if you ask one question, if you could say, you know, tell me about what your mom was like when you were little or something like that. They'll start talking to you. They'll tell you about their dog and their grandmama and the mortgage on their house and their favorite car and what they're gonna do next week at work. And they may talk to you. It's almost like they don't take a breath. You can't get a word in edgewise. Like, I know I talk fast, like right now, but it's more than that. And it can be sort of all over the place and difficult to track. It's almost like one idea leads to the next, lead to the next, lead to the next. And it's hard sometimes when it's really severe to keep it contained. Now in the Elisa Lam case, she was, when she was initially at the hotel Cecil, she was in with some roommates. But those roommates complained about some bizarre behavior and the hotel ended up putting her in a room by herself. And so my guess is she had some of this like hyperverbal, the non sleeping. And that was difficult for the roommates to stay with is what my guess is. Now, other than the talkativeness, you have distractibility, you have what's called a. What they call, sort of clinically they call it an increase in goal directed behavior. That sounds fancy, right? What that means in my mind when I've seen it is people that are manic tend to get really preoccupied and almost obsessed with something. Now that something can be anything, it really can be anything. But there's some really common things that people can get, you can sort of see that people get obsessed about. They're just sort of common flavors, I guess you would say. Although it can be anything, people usually either they can start spending a lot of money, like very haphazardly. Not like I went to the mall and I bought myself extra cute parachutes and I probably should have spent that, but more like I went and maxed out my credit cards and bought my two best friends new cars or something like that. You know, like extreme kind of spending. The other thing that you see a lot is sometimes people can get hyper religious and they can get very, very focused on religious. And because they have that grandiosity and the no sleep, they can feel like they're getting secret messages or important messages, or they have these special missions on the planet and you can get into some psych psychosis, especially because of the no sleep. If you think about it, even if you don't have bipolar and you've never known anyone that has it. Here's what I like to think about Anytime I go on a road trip and I push myself too far because I'm just driving and I'm thinking I'm almost there. I don't want to stop, and I haven't had any sleep, and I just pushed too far. You know that point where you just almost start to see things, and that's just after pushing yourself too far on a road trip. So you can imagine what it would be like to have no sleep or like an only an hour to a night. After that happens for several nights in a row, you can get yourself in some trouble. And so that's when someone can become. They can have psychosis, and that sometimes can be paranoia, but it can also be, like I said, it can be hyper religious. People can start spending money, which isn't necessarily psychosis, but is a symptom of mania, or they could. The other thing that you see a lot is hypersexuality. So the sex drive goes up through the roof. And people can make some very risky, scary decisions when it comes to that in those kind of relationships that they would not have done otherwise. And so those are just common things. You see, people get preoccupied with. Like I said, it could be anything, but you can see that their energy and their obsession about it is outside of the norm. You know, they may think, okay, I'm gonna start this new church and I'm gonna sell everything I have and we're gonna move to Colorado and start this big mission, just sort of suddenly, almost out of nowhere. And when people are in this state of mind, they can make some decisions that cause mis major consequences. That's one of the criteria is, you know, when you're in this mania state, you make some decisions that cause a lot of trouble later on when the mania subsides. And what I've noticed with people with bipolar disorder, the hardest thing about it, and it just. It's heartbreaking, is that when people are manic, they feel better. And so people tend to like the mania part. And so typically, or not typically, but often when people get manic, that part feels good. And they think, okay, I don't need this medicine anymore. So they go off their medicine, and then the mania gets really out of control and it passes that sweet spot, like I said, and gets into that really scary sort of disturbing part. And when they do that, you know, it may be they didn't show up for class for, you know, a few weeks, or they spent all this money or they had an affair or did some other kind of behavior that really causes a lot of trouble. And once that mania starts to wear off and they come to terms with, you know, some things they've done, which in some cases it's almost like you work so hard to put your life together and then you almost like destroy it during this period of mania. And so it's this constant having to start over. And that's really the heartbreaking cycle. You know, this bipolar disorder really is a fairly debilitating illness. Now it can be controlled and it can be helped. And people that have bipolar can live totally normal lives, especially if they can get their medicine contained. But like I said, one of the biggest problems is medication non compliance with this particular issue. Now, in the case of Elisa Lam, the whole sort of intrigue about this case is you have all this footage of her in the elevator at the Hotel Cecil, and you can see that she's acting very bizarrely. She's pushing all these buttons. It almost looks like she's paranoid or she's talking to someone that's not there and she's like looking out of the elevator. It's just really bizarre type of behavior. And if you, you know, looking at that, if you said, could this be manic behavior? I would say, yeah, it could definitely manic type of behavior. Because like I said, after those days of no sleep and the situation escalates and gets, you know, more and more and more manic, you can see all kinds of strange behaviors. And she, she ended up being found in these huge water tanks that sit on top of the hotel. And it wasn't until several days later, and the yucky part is, it's like guests had been complaining about the water being kind of funky and brown and a weird taste and a weird SM kind of. That's really creepy. I know. And so the whole controversy is like, did she put herself in those tanks? Was she trying to hurt herself? Was it an accident? Or did someone do something to her? Hey, Elena 11, I see your question there. I'm going to come back and answer that because that's actually a good question. So just hang tight. I'm going to answer you. When people are just intrigued with it and people have all these different ideas about what happened. So you tell me, what do you think? Do you think it's possible for her to have done that? Is it possible, in my mind, that someone in a manic episode, under those conditions, totally by their self, could have put themselves in those big water tanks? Yeah, I think it's possible. It's hard to know what someone might be thinking, you know, and then there's this question of, well, did she do it? Did she hurt herself on purpose? I'm not really sure about that because everyone that was interviewed, no one, there was nothing sort of written in her blogs or anything like that that made you think that she had any kind of intention like that. She had been talking to her family regularly. She had almost been in that mania that like, grandiose things are wonderful or excited sort of face. Now, she did have some depressive writings, but nothing severe that would make you think she was going to do something like that to herself. So I honestly don't think that that's what happened. I either think it was an accident and she had some kind of bizarre thought or a psychotic thought and for whatever reason put herself in the water tank or someone else could have done something to her and put her in the water tank because. Because she was having this manic episode. She was bipolar. She was much more vulnerable than the average person for, you know, somebody that maybe have bad intentions because she even talked about, hey, I'm open to a meetup online and stuff like that. And so your, your filters and your impulse control is all really down. And you're like, danger warning zone button is turned way down when you're manic. And so because of that, she could have made some decisions and spent some time with people or someone that maybe wasn't a good choice. Now, there's no evidence of that because there's nowhere on footage where you can see her with someone else. So it's hard to know. For me, I think, I think probably it was an accident and she, for whatever reason, got into those tanks. I don't think she accidentally fell in because you had a climate she intentionally got in. But I don't think she meant to harm herself, I guess, is what I'm saying. I don't know what she was thinking, but I don't really think it was to harm herself. The only thing that I've seen in any of the YouTube videos or Netflix that makes me think otherwise is there's some kind of conversation about the lid on the tanks that it. What you would have had, like, it would have been almost impossible for her to have been in the tank and then put the lid back on. So to me, that's the piece of evidence that's like, I don't know about that piece. The rest of the strange, bizarre behaviors that you can see, you hear witnesses talking about, you can, you can sort of see it in all of her online entries and stuff like that definitely is consistent with bipolar disorder. And mania. So I think it's very clear that she was having a manic episode. It's not as clear as to if that was the cause or the thing that contributed to her ending up in those water tanks. Definitely want to know what you guys have to think. Now. Elaine, 11 is here with us live and is asking how close in time can mania lapses happen? Well, in my. I'm glad you asked that because I meant to say that. So thank you for reminding me. In my experience, that usually happens over the course of weeks or months. And that's what I mean when I say, you know, people sometimes say, oh, they're moody, they're up and down, you know, 10 times a day or something. That's usually not bipolar. That could be something else, mental health going on, but probably not bipolar. Like I said, you, you see it build. It's kind of like this slow momentum going up. The person, like I said, feels better and better and, and then good and then great and then past gray is like not so good. You're coming down on the other side of that curve. So in my experience, it's weeks or months. A lot of people will cycle seasonally. Like it's pretty common that people might start to get kind of manic in the spring or summer. And in the case of Elisa Lam, this all happened at the, like right at the very beginning of February. So right when people might start to turn that corner. And people tend to get depressed in the fall and winter. Now that is not a like rule where it always happens that way. It could be the opposite. There could be, you know, it could have nothing to do with the seasons. But commonly you'll see that kind of cycle. There is something referred to as rapid cycling bipolar. And it's not really an official type of bipolar, it's just kind of a descriptor. But even with rapid cycling bipolar disorder, what that means is if someone has more than four mood swings in a 12 month period. So you can see, I think these mood shifts are just not nearly as fast as most people think that they are. Vicki says, hey, I'm bipolar and I acted just like that before I was put on meds. Thank you for sharing that. Vicki. What is it that you're relating to? Is it this, these things on the list? Is there anything that happened in that case if you're familiar with it that you can identify with? Elaine, 11 says hello. I think it's rare thing to happen for sure. I would look into some previous experiences with water maybe. Yeah, that's a really good thought process there, Elaine. It's like, what's the significance of the water? There is some theories out there that her behavior seemed really consistent with this movie I think came out in the early 2000s called Dark Water. And there's some theories that it's like she was almost, like, reenacting that movie, but there's really no evidence of that. That's just kind of a thought process that's out there. Thank you again for joining us. We will be here tomorrow live for Valentine's Day, and we're gonna do something a little bit lighter. So if you want to join us for that, we are going to talk about how to make someone fall in love with you. Like I said, a little bit lighter side for Valentine's Day. See you then.