Just recently worked out my ex has bipolar

Hi I am looking for some support as i feel i have just worked out what happened to me ex husband.

This is my story. We were married for 16 years and got along so well. Spent all our spare time together with our 3 beautiful kids and never fought. My husband woke up one morning and he was a completly different person. That was almost 5 years ago. He was angry at me as he believed i did not love him anymore (which was so far from the truth), he was angry at the kids for no reason. Refused to speak to us and seemed to become panic stricken and unable to be near me.

That night he left and has never returned. He did not seem to care that he had no where to live, no possessions, a wife who was shocked and in tears and children who were crying and begging him to come home. He reunited with some old friends who had not seen him for 15 years and made new friends and just wanted to party and go away for the weekends with them. He spent little time with the kids and the time they did spend with him they reported to me that their dad was angry, behaving really weird and doing strange things, driving dangerously with them in the car and a complete stranger to them.

At that time they were aged 15, 11 and 7. i had experienced the same behaviour myself when i had seen him and the abuse got too much for me and the children and we saw less and less of him. He did not care much at all about this and seemed obsessed with his new friends and had no sympathy for his family ( even when one of our children had surgery that required a long recovery).

I tried on so many occasions to tell him something was wrong and that he needed to see a doctor. i offered to come with him and support him if he wanted however this just led to so much abuse that i become extremly scared of him and stated to suffer anxiety.

I watched from afar as he seemed to be coming out of this after about 9 months thats when his dad and only living relative that was close to him died and then it all began again. I was living a nightmare and myself and one of my kids had to stay away from him for our own sanity. The other two kids would usually see him for 2 hours a week and report that he was not the dad they knew growing up. He was holding down his manager job and this always confused me as i could not understand how he seemed to be holding that part of his life together while everything else was turned upside down.

After years of not seeing him i contacted him and we became friends. He was not the person i knew for 16 years however the anger and damaging words/behaviour were not there so i was able to chat with him and spend some time when he came to get the kids who were rebuilding their relationship with him.

He would never speak about what happened and i was still scared of him so i did not ask although i did try to get him to do a family therapy course to talk about our issues with the kids however he was not interested and by that stage i had convinced myself that he had had a breakdown and was happy with where he was in life.

Just recently his job was under threat and it was looking likely that he might lose his job and the place he manages would possibly close down. He was stressed and then i saw the same behaviour that i had seen before return.

His anger was not directed towards me until i asked him to please go to therapy with the children (as i knew he would not go alone and by that stage the kids had also started to be effected again by his behaviour and were backing away from him again).

I have read up and educated myself on mental illness over the past few weeks and i am so sure that he is suffering from bipolar. At the moment i believe he is hypomanic and i know this is the worst time to try to tell him what i suspect from experience.

What is a good time to talk to him about it? Does anyone have any experience in helping someone understand what is happening to them and getting them to seek help? How do i help him? Do you know of any places i could go to speak to someone experienced in bipolar in Melbourne?