Hello Dragonfly. "How do you handle this?" I won't lie to you and tell you that it is easy. However hopefully you will come to realize that all you can do is provide support, love and understanding.
As you may know I have a son with bipolar. He has been hospitalized numerous times, got in trouble with the police when his delusions caused him to believe that his neighbour was a drug dealer(he would call the police and report supposed drug transactions), I've had to drive the 300km to his place numerous times when he was suicidal , I've had to drive and pick him up in the middle of the night when he was thrown out by his g/f and had no place to go and the most difficult of all was talking to him by phone and trying to keep him from jumping off of a 9th floor parking garage ledge, all the while praying that A) he wouldn't hang up and B) his cell phone wouldn't run out of battery until his bother could get there. (with all due respect to the police if they had been called they would have shown up with lights and sirens and that would have pushed him over the edge).
How did I handle his illness. With love and concern. Just like you are with your son. I never shut the door on him, no matter how bad my moods were and I still to this day always check my emails and answering machine as the last thing I do before I go to bed.
To be honest it did nearly finish me off during that bad 7 yr+ stretch but I knew I had to be there for him so I held it together(barely). Today he is a proud father of 1.5 kids and works steadily.
If it's any help I know very few people who have went through as rough of time with their illness as you and I and my son (and most other people on this forum) . A lot of people with bipolar or another mental illness may find it quite treatable. I have a relative with bipolar who lived and worked successfully as long as he didn't take a high stress job. Many people I know only have bad ups and downs and sideways when they are subject to external stress. A friend of mine was hospitalized many times with bipolar until his wife divorced him and after a few yrs when the shock wore off he hasn't had a serious episode since.(He had a lousy marriage)
Early and proper treatment is the generally accepted key these days. The problem being who decides what's early and who decides what's proper. For example (and I'm only guessing here) some of your son's up's and downs may be caused more by anxiety than by bipolar. Taking a good CBT course might help him a lot at this stage as I'm sure that he has many anxieties. I'm certainly not saying that anxieties will cause bipolar, but if a person has bipolar lying dormant just below the surface, anxieties can certainly trigger an episode. However he should talk to a good doctor and not just take my word for it.
I worry about my grandson and future granddaughter developing a mental illness, however unlike me, those kids will know all about mental illness long before I ever learned that mental illness has deep roots in my ancestors. Because it was kept hidden from me it took a lot longer for my problems to be properly diagnosed. It also affected my son because he was in his teens and already having problems himself before I found out what was wrong with me. Had he (and I) been treated earlier our lives might have been different. Also if we had of understanding relatives it also would have made a big difference.
In regards to educating relatives. I also was one of six kids, I long ago gave up trying to educate the other five. (or my father) You just can't educate someone who doesn't want to be educated. Take Care. paul m