So my job, for many years now, is to go and assess people with mental illness at crisis point and help figure out what help they need. I also spent years before that working on acute wards and secure units and was in the game since I left school. You can disagree with me but I'm coming at this with plenty of experience.
"Classic bi polar" as some people are labelling Fury, is characterised by extreme highs and lows of mood: but it's not like people are depressed one minute and high the next. The lows can last for weeks or even months and can be extreme, with the sufferer believing they might be responsible for atrocities on TV, feel tremendous guilt, maybe even hear voices (this is not exclusive to schizophrenia) stop washing, stop eating, take to their beds, stop talking, etc. Eventually, they can be gradually brought out of it with medication, but this needs to be closely monitored to prevent them "going the other way"
As we call it and going high.
Again, the highs can last months and the patient can be a tigger like nightmare, not sleeping for days on end, believing they are a genius or a millionaire, a brilliant business man, spending money recklessly (and I don't mean buying a big round in France that you can afford) often ending up in extreme debt or bankrupt, sometimes being extremely violent and aggressive (I once looked after a chap who legend had it rolled a police car in a rage), rambling non stop, grandiosity, preaching in the street, on the tube etc, running around naked. Again, with hospitalisation who heavy medication, eventually the symptoms can be controlled and the patient settles.
They almost always lack "insight", don't believe there is anything wrong with them and stop taking the medication which becomes a revolving cycle of relapses and readmissions, and often the medication that worked before does not work again, and something new has to be tried.
There used to be a diagnosis "rapid cycling bi polar" where people would experience the highs and lows more rapidly, but I have never seen a case in a decade and a half of the job. In short, if you are bi polar you do not go from being so depressed you have to cancel the biggest fight of your life to sitting watching a boxing match grinning and laughing.
I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I would think Fury suffers from EUPD (emotionally unstable personality disorder). I'm not going to go through it all here, have a google if you want, but sufferers do experience mood swings, feel unwanted, tend to seek validation from others and then push it away, self sabotage, and struggle with their sense of self, often changing their image. They also act out, are attention seekers and can be the most difficult patients to look after. Medication does not really help and psychological treatment is considered the best option, but is hard going, long term and difficult to keep the client engaged in, particularly if they are from a macho background like Fury: they just see the therapy as bollocks and give up. EUPD is almost always as a result of a turbulent and or abusive childhood. PD's aren't "mad"
as such, and it is debatable whether any treatment works for them.
In short, I don't think he's bi polar. I would have bought that he was a depressive, had he not turned up at a boxing match grinning. So he's either taking the piss, or he has a personality disorder (which I think seems likely) and that doesn't mean he can't fight again. Whether he will actually want to is another matter. Obviously the focus of training etc kept him on a somewhat even keel for most of his life, but with his goals fufilled, and the lack of satisfaction that came with it, I can't see him finding focus again and he'll probably become incredibly erratic and off the rails.
Just an opinion. If he starts exhibiting more psychotic symptoms, then I'll change my mind. But I don't think he's bi polar at all. That's a big thing to label somebody. It's a hardcore illness. There are different extremes of course, like Stephen Fry who purports to have a "mild" form of bi polar and I believe is not even medicated? But to me Fury just doesn't fit the bill.
Excellent post
Add in the fact that Fury is in an extremely high-pressure environment without any let-up and that the family have been reluctant to bring in people who could actually relieve that pressure and that would explain a very great deal.
The mood swings between attention seeking and then ridiculing himself to the point of self-loathing now make more sense.
