At the end of the last thread someone asked why I didn't believe JH showed symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
I immediately ruled out bipolar because my mother suffers from of it & I've seen more manic episodes that led to psychosis than I care to remember. In addition, because I want to know as much about the disorder as possible so I know what signs to look for that might indicate she's not taking her medication or her meds need adjusting, I've read a ton of books and memoirs on the subject.
When most people with bipolar disorder experience mania, their thoughts are flying through their brain at a rate so fast that they don't have the capacity to latch onto one specific thing. I realize that the disorder manifests itself in different ways for every patient but many bipolar patients have some type of grandiose delusion--not like JH displaying a grandiose personality--but actually believe they ARE a spiritual being like God or world leader. Or they believe they've been chosen to do something of great importance by one. (For example, my mom once came into my room in the middle of the night and turned my TV on and switched to a channel with static. She told me that God was about to send her a message thru the TV and it was her sole duty to share it with the rest of the world.) I haven't heard anything about JH having actual delusions or hallucinations either... which is pretty much a requirement for a schizophrenia diagnosis. He's held false beliefs but those aren't the same as delusions.
Also, many bipolar and schizophrenic patients exhibit very unorganized thought patterns... they'll use made up words, create loose associations like "that clock looks like it has a headache" etc. Another example: when my mom worked on arts and crafts while she was in the hospital, she wrote all the letters upside down. She tried to write the words down the same way she did in the hospital after she was back to her normal self & she couldn't do it. The brain just goes haywire with these illnesses and I haven't seen any evidence that JH's brain was processing thoughts that way.
ETA: I also wanted to mention that the paranoid thoughts characteristic of schizophrenia tend to be very specific in nature ("That man is going to kill me with a machete!") and JH uses really vague examples when talking about being paranoid. If he truly suffered from schizophrenia, instead of saying "I thought people were always talking about me or wanted to harm me", he might say something like... "I thought my classmates were plotting to kidnap me and send me to Mars on the Destroyer".
IMO
