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May Is Borderline Personality Awareness Month

The 4-year-old child spills the cereal on the floor when trying to put some in his own bowl.  The mother’s response: “I told you not to take cereal yourself! No one listens to me. I’m a piece of garbage!” Storming,… Continue Reading

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Looking For: A Little Good News, If I Can Remember It

You know what I like? A little good news. It doesn’t really seem like all that much to ask. You know, just not the constant drumbeat of gloom and doom. But apparently ever since T.S. Eliot had the brilliant insight… Continue Reading

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Good Cognitive Remediation Studies Are Hard To Find–Unless You’re Danish

So you may recall from my mentioning in previous posts – and I most certainly hope you do not – that my ECT treatments combined with my bipolar disorder (BD) have left me, well – how do I say this… Continue Reading

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Do I Disgust You? The Visual Missed Cues of Bi-Polar Patients

Did you ever get the feeling that someone didn’t like you? I mean–really, really didn’t like you, perhaps even saw you as beneath contempt? And–did you get that feeling before there was any interaction between you and the aforesaid person?… Continue Reading

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Mental Health Wellness Week, October 5-11, 2014: Just the Facts, Ma’am.

  Unlike most of the Awareness Months, Weeks, or Days I cover, Mental Health Awareness Week is a grassroots public education campaign–it wasn’t designated by the Senate, it isn’t supported by an organization that’s been around since the time of… Continue Reading

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Differentiating unipolar and bipolar depression

I don’t always trust the way the government uses its funds to research on health. If you ask me why all that negativity, I turn to you: Do these  studies look like good ways of using around a couple hundred… Continue Reading

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But they TOLD me I was Bipolar: It seems the twain CAN meet, Part II

Do you remember that I told you that bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia have been considered completely different illnesses for. . .well, pretty much forever? Until researchers started getting a look at people’s brains? And then it seemed possible–just possible–that… Continue Reading

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But they TOLD me I was Bipolar: It seems the twain CAN meet, Part I

Although there’s no reason to doubt that schizophrenia is as old as mankind, the name didn’t come into existence until 1910, when the Swiss psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler termed the illness such, with the Greek words schizo (split) and phren (mind)… Continue Reading

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What does it take to get to be bipolar around here?

Health professionals have known about the problem of this time lag for years, and back in 1999 were asking in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, “Is bipolar disorder still underdiagnosed? Are antidepressants overutilized?”  The short answer is, ‘yup.’ That study… Continue Reading

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Bipolar Disorder and Cognitive Impairment

There’s not a lot that makes you feel better about yourself than someone flat-out telling you you’re stupid. My doctor seems to think if he gives lots of reasons for my stupidity, excusing me for being a somewhat of an… Continue Reading