Gaming your mental health

Looking back, I pretty much had one anxiety attack that lasted from 1987 to 1990.   I cycled long and hard during that time, swinging from sleep-deprived mania to bottom of the well depression, all the while caring for 2 kids and giving birth to a 3rd.  Pregnant and/or with small children depending on me, self-medication [...]

Bipolar Disorder Awareness Day

“You should try … “

Know someone with a chronic illness or disability? Here’s what not to do.
From amandaw @ Feministe:
Often, when someone learns that another person lives with some sort of medical condition, slight or severe, their first reaction is to suggest to that person some way they could make their condition better.
On behalf of all those persons, [...]

I’m an exception

A couple of days ago while waiting for Tony I listened to an interview with Charles Barber on NPR. He was promoting his new book, Comfortably Numb; How Psychiatry is Medicating A Nation and making the case that antidepressants and other psych drugs are over-prescribed when therapy is more effective and shorter term. [...]

That’s all they need to say

From the Spokesman Review headlines: Bipolar man found guilty of murder
That sums him up and explains why he did it, I suppose. One word.
Too bad we’re unlikely to see a headline screaming Bipolar Woman Raises Three Healthy Kids and Goes Back To College At 48.

I have cramps, so my eggs must be bipolar

In the last couple of years Bipolar Disorder has become a popular diagnosis for kids, with doctors citing silliness and temper tantrums as symptoms in afflicted preschoolers. Color me skeptical, but while I have no doubt that BPD can and does express itself at a young age, I don’t think that 1 million–a forty-fold [...]

Everything you ever wanted to know …

…about Bipolar Disorder but were afraid to ask — that’s the direction I’m moving with a nonfiction project. If you’ve got questions of any sort (don’t be shy) pass them along here. Do you have BPD or love someone who does? What do you wish other people knew about this brain disease? [...]

Top Ten Signs You Need To Call Your Doctor

20 hours of sleep in the last 8 days, and still having plenty of energy
Nightmares when you do manage to pass out
Sleeping pills don’t really make you sleep, they just lock you into passed out nightmares you can’t wake from, so you don’t take them
Feeling the overwhelming urge to get pierced. Anywhere. Now.
Rum [...]

Words matter

Jeff Hess at Have Coffee Will Write posted something last night that touched me greatly and got me thinking. In a reference to a monk attempting self-immolation, he had this to say, “Was it frustration, anger or a brain illness? Is it just that not everyone has the will of the Buddha?”
Not “mental illness,” [...]

A psychic itch

I’ve written before about the problem I have with self-harm when I’m under stress. My tool of choice isn’t a razor blade - it’s my fingernails, scratching my arms until they bleed. I’m pleased to report I’ve been several months without a major episode, and particularly with the addition of a new drug, [...]

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