"From Risky Encounters to Debt and Despair: My 7-Year Struggle Before Diagnosis Left Me Feeling Suicidal"

LOOKING around her living room one day, Rosanna Cronin realised she was surrounded by unopened boxes of toys piled everywhere.

Alongside the clutter was something more frightening: – £6,000 of it on one credit card alone. Rosanna’s spending habit saw her impulsively buy at , , and . There were always justifications – birthdays, , bargains too good to miss – but deep down she knew it was spiralling.

Rosanna Cronin, 31, from Kent, found out her impulsive spending had a cause – and it was treatableCredit: Supplied Rosanna struggled all through her twenties with impulsive behaviourCredit: Supplied Antidepressants just made Rosanna, pictured now, worse when doctors misdiagnosed her with depressionCredit: Supplied

Rosanna, 31, from , tells : “It looked like Santa’s grotto.

“My friends used to joke that my kids had Smyths in the corner of the room.

“I’d be bored at home with the kids and would think, ‘What do I do?’ I’d go out and spend some .

“I’d buy backups of everything. Toiletries, toys, clothes. I didn’t need any of it.”

The impulsivity didn’t stop at spending. During the same period, Rosanna was also making risky decisions that put her personal safety at risk.

“I’d meet men online and agree to go round their house the same night,” she says. “I didn’t really think about the danger. I just did it.”

What Rosanna didn’t know at the time was that she had – that causes extreme mood swings and changes in energy levels.

She struggled all through her twenties, undiagnosed. Instead, she was told she had or .

It took seven more years after these diagnoses for her to be told she had bipolar – and Rosanna isn’t alone.

According to Bipolar UK, over half of people living with bipolar, approximately half a million people in the UK, don’t have a diagnosis, meaning their condition often goes untreated.

“I just thought I was bad at coping,” she says. “I didn’t realise there was something bigger going on.”

Rosanna’s struggles began long before adulthood.

Growing up, school was a hostile place. She was bullied relentlessly – sometimes taunted, sometimes targeted for no clear reason at all.

“I didn’t enjoy school at all,” she says. “I was bullied constantly. Sometimes it was ‘you’ve got nits’, sometimes it was just whatever they fancied that day.

“I started to rebel against the school – bunking off so I didn’t have to deal with the bullies.

I’d always been this wacky, crazy person who also got into these horrible lows and I could finally make sense of it.

Rosanna Cronin

“I was self-harming and a teacher knew because I was asked outright, and I said ‘yes’ but they didn’t get me any help. My parents couldn’t understand why I was doing it.

“There just wasn’t the understanding back then.”

By her early twenties, her had deteriorated sharply.

Feeling suicidal, in 2015, Rosanna went to her diagnosed her with depression and prescribed the drug Sertraline.

The effect it had made Rosanna feel even more out of control.

“Within 20 minutes of taking it, I was running around work saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m back again, I feel amazing’,” she recalls.

Rosanna was working in a nursery at the time. The highs were chaotic and the lows crushing.

“Not even an hour later, I’d be back down again,” she says. “Withdrawn, suicidal, not myself at all.

“Then there’d be another high. I kept taking my shoes off and running about in the road, being hyper and wild.”

At one point, she experienced a full manic episode in a GP surgery – running around the doctor’s room, playing with objects, unable to sit still.

Bipolar UK warns that antidepressants should only ever be prescribed to people with bipolar alongside a mood stabiliser.

Without that combination, it’s not uncommon for people with bipolar to experience hypomania or mania after starting antidepressants, which is potentially life-threatening for someone with bipolar.

Rosanna, pictured at 16 years old, was not diagnosed with bipolar until she’ d had two children and several suicide attemptsCredit: Supplied Rosanna, pictured with her borther, says the highs and lows were “crushing”Credit: Supplied “After my second daughter, I’d had six months of mania. It was the spending, the rash decisions about meeting men I barely knew,” says RosannaCredit: Supplied

In fact, in a Bipolar UK survey of more than 2000 people living with bipolar, 19 per cent of respondents reported that starting antidepressants played a major role in their first manic or mixed-state episode.

Rosanna was eventually referred to the community mental team, where clinicians began to recognise a lifelong pattern of extreme mood swings.

Later in 2015, she was given a different diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

She says: “It was incredible to finally have an answer that explained so much about my personality.

“I’d always been this wacky, crazy person who also got into these horrible lows, and I could finally make sense of it.”

Doctors prescribed a different antidepressant first. Then Rosanna was prescribed a mood stabiliser, but still she felt extreme mood swings.

“The mood stabiliser made me a walking zombie. Other made the highs and lows even more extreme.”

Over the years, Rosanna had multiple and was hospitalised twice, including after the birth of her first daughter in 2018.

“I was in a mother and baby unit on suicide watch for about six weeks,” she says, “just trying to get my head straight”.

In October 2021, after the birth of her second daughter, Rosanna felt especially manic.

“For me, it explained everything,” she says. “Why I’d always been this loud, wild person, and then crash so low. I finally had answers.

Spending, rash decisions and random men

“After my second daughter, I’d had six months of mania. It was the spending, the rash decisions about meeting men I barely knew.

“I wasn’t sleeping – just naps here and there. I was buying takeaways instead of .

“I was being helped by a peri-natal team, and I was very open about the fact I’d got into debt and been manic. They were like, ‘Hang on, something isn’t right here.”

After being referred to another psychiatrist, Rosanna was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder on her birthday, in May 2022.

“For me, it was like a birthday gift,” she says. “I didn’t know what exactly it entailed and how it was different to my borderline personality disorder – I’m still trying to wrap my head around the similarities.

“I was still quite manic around that time.”

It took around two years for Rosanna to receive medication that worked for her, due to side effects. Overall, she says it took ten years to get the correct medication mix.

Today, Rosanna’s life looks very different. She hasn’t self-harmed in two years and hasn’t attempted suicide since 2018.

Her third – her son, now one – was calm and stable, something she never thought possible.

In August this year, Rosanna married her husband Michael, 32, a mental health nurse and the dad of her youngest child.

The couple are raising their son and Rosanna’s two other children, six and four, who she had from other partners.

“I went from suicidal and all over the place to actually living a life,” she says.

“I’ve gone from struggling to helping other people overcome their struggles. I’m a lot more in tune with my body now.

“I can see if I’m about to be low or manic, and the medication can be adjusted.”

Now training to be a counsellor, Rosanna hopes her story will help others push for answers.

“If it doesn’t feel right, keep going,” she says. “It’s a horrible, lengthy battle to try and get your medications right, but it’s just about being open with the psychiatrists and everybody who can try and make a change for you.

“Ask for a second opinion. Ask to see a psychiatrist. You deserve someone to see the full picture as so often bipolar disorder doesn’t get diagnosed. Getting my diagnosis has changed my life for the better.”

Now, the mum-of-three’s life is very different and she hasn’t self harmed or had suicidal thoughts in yearsCredit: Supplied