Bipolar disorder: A daughter breaks her silence

That was a long-overdue piece, in this country that sweeps all discussions of mental illnesses under the rug. Or places mentally ill-people up as as objects of ridicule (remember, Brenda in the 1992 elections?)

I have two schizoaffective brothers, but of course I can’t come out and risk ruining their hard-earned reputations. The older one is functional and achieving during lucid moments, the younger one is still hopeful that he has a future ahead of them. I myself deal with my own cycles – I am very, very lucky not to have any real “manic” phases. Those I know who suffer from these say they feel so good when they’re manic, they would never have thought at first that it was part of an illness. I just go through cycles of being OK, then times when I am absolutely unable to function. In my teens and early 20s, I was even suicidal. Now in my mid 30s, I have come to a sort of “détente” with my illness…

The thing is, I am supposed to be taking medications regularly –according to one of the country’s best psychiatrists, whom my brother also sees. I respect his prescription. But because I simply don’t have money, and have my own family now to support, I have had to learn to “ride” these cycles without medication. I am still alive, and I am actually now quite hopeful (in general) about life. I have learned some tricks, like, reporting to work like a zombie and pretending to work during depressive phases, then catching up during lucid moments…

I am not about to advocate a non-medical approach to mental illness, although there are quite a few radicals who would do so. But still, I’d like to say my piece, with the hope that it can be helpful to fellow sufferers who may also not have the money for medications. Hopefully, some doctor will weigh in to correct some of my assertions—

Yes, I’m not doctor, but in the past 20 years of trying to help myself and my family, I’ve read the DSMDD (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), and a host of other literature, talked to lots of people, sufferers, family members, experts.

So here, I’d like to share some of my learnings in this (quite long) piece for those who suffer from depression:

1. I believe it depressives are not vegetables, are not “victims” and are not fully helpless. While the illness can be debilitating, I really believe it is possible to live a full life and work towards health. Or at least, to keep on trying.

2. It pays to be careful about who you go to for help. Because mental health is not given priority in this country, there are only a handful of really good psychiatrists in this country. Among them are Dr. Lesaca and Dra. June Lopez (shameless plug). But I think it’s important to say this because psychotropic drugs are very powerful, and can even damage the developing brains of children. Lots of people get misdiagnosed, and end up the worse for it. Just check out government mental health facilities and see what the recovery rate is… don’t take my word for it. Also, some abusive personalities are attracted to the mental health profession because of the huge amount of power it affords one over the inner lives of others. Remember the book and movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest? In the local scene, the Women’s Crisis Center has tracked the stories of many women who were abused by their “therapists.”

3. The U.S. FDA has recently urged the makers of Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants to add a warning about suicidal behavior that may be exacerbated by these medications. The FDA stated that patients using Zoloft and other antidepressants should be watched closely for suicidal tendencies. http://www.yourlawyer.com/topics/overview/zoloft

4. depression is the “common cold” of mental illnesses. It can be an illness in itself, or be combined with –or a symptom – of other illnesses, just like a cold can come with an upper respiratory infection. It does help to have the Beck Depression Inventory at hand, and to check yourself regularly…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck_Depression_Inventory

5. For me, cognitive therapy has been very effective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_therapy. I have reached the point that I can catch the trigger – what a person says or does, and the thought /s I had that triggered the black mood.” But I have still to get to the point where I can counter these thoughts immediately, or as they come. For me, it takes a while, or even a day or so.

6. Reading poetry. Depression remission rates in a London psychiatric ward increased with regular poetry sessions. Believe it or not.

7. Exercise — everyday. Nothing beats this. Even just brisk walking, but make sure you’re already sweating. Exercise and going outdoors. Force yourself not to brood. This can take a superhuman effort at the start, but it is important TO GET YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR BED. Everything after that is easier, and downhill. Exercise releases the same brain chemicals (dopamine and serotonin) that depressed people lack.

8. St. John’s Wort — GNC used to have, although this has been pulled from the market. Would be interesting to find out why—Otherwise, you can buy off the web, if you have money…

9. Swimming with the dolphins. The Environmental News Service came out with a report saying that “Dolphin therapy fights depression” and that “Dolphins are increasingly being used in therapeutic treatments”

Swimming with dolphins appears to help alleviate mild to moderate depression, researchers of the University of Leicester team found this year. They tested the effect of regular swimming sessions with dolphins on 15 depressed people in a study carried out in Honduras. They found that symptoms improved more among this group than among another 15 who swam in the same area – but did not interact with dolphins. The study is published in the British Medical Journal.

Because we don’t have dolphins in the metropolis, (can fly regularly to Bohol if you can afford), I’ve found that both swimming and having a pet / pets help. This is especially for those who suffer from anxiety-depression, which is the type I suffer from. I also read somewhere that even inmates imprisoned for violent crimes have been discovered to calm down when they are made to care for pets.

10. Find out the source of depression / the trigger and remove yourself from it. This is so very important, probably the first thing to do and also very tricky. It is a rare case of a healthy family and a mentally ill individuals. Usually, entire families are unhealthy, and have fallen into unhealth patterns of relating.

11. Depression is often linked to creativity. For the sake of sanity (and humanity, too), I hope all mentally-ill people discover and enrich their potentials.

Check out this link:
Mental illness meets creativity in new journal of literary arts (University of Chicago Chronicle)

A mind that possesses great artistic ability often suffers from great mental anguish, as well. This was a finding in a study of well-known visual and literary artists, and it was a result that Robert Lundin applied to contemporary artists who have lived with mental illness.

Lundin, Publications Manager for the University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, was inspired by the research and subsequent book by Kay Redfield Jamison of Johns Hopkins University. In her book, Touched with Fire, Manic-depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Jamison analyzed the mental suffering of such historic artists, composers, poets and authors as Vincent van Gogh, Robert Schumann, George Gordon, Lord Byron and Virginia Woolf.

All of these artists had been recognized for their talent, but they also had been institutionalized for mental illness or had attempted or committed suicide. After studying the psychiatric histories of many artists, Jamison linked creative ability to mental illness, finding that most of the people she studied had suffered from probable major depression, manic-depressive disorder, or cyclothymia, a manic-depressive psychosis marked by alternating periods of excitement and activity with periods of depression and inactivity… ( http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/020307/awakenings.shtml)

12. HUMOR. Even black humor. Did I mention about my auntie who was such a caring, efficient nurse in the US, and got really ill before she died? During episodes, she was convinced that the neighbors were “building a tunnel to her house.” Bwahahahahaha.

Among ourselves, we in the family laugh at our illness, the “bizarre” things we do when we get into these moods. We cry also, of course, a lot, lot, lot. But we also try to laugh about these things… even when they can be very painful instances. Of course we do this, when we’re all lucid, or else someone is bound to feel “praning” hehehe. [And you can just imagine how small the probability is of getting all the members of our large family “lucid” all at the same time, when they all have different frequencies to their cycles-- (Bwahahaha again)]

13. Find people who love and care for you. I’m lucky in this aspect –

Let me end this piece with this article:
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Attacking the Stigma of Mental Illness
April 28, 2002
The Reverend Charles J. Stephens

I believe the world is inherently good, an incredible blessing. As Mathew Fox puts it, rather than believing in original sin, I believe in original blessing. Our very first Unitarian Universalist principle is the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It is said that one of the differences between Unitarians and Universalists is that Unitarians believed that we humans are too good to be damned and that Universalists believed that God is too good to damn anyone. Fortunately, both come to the same point that we all have worth, no matter what our condition. Our being has worth. Regardless of our physical condition, our financial condition, our mental condition, or our emotional condition, we are part of one interconnected web.

Historically, religious liberals have fought against prejudice and disenfranchisement. Unitarians and Universalists served as leaders in the abolitionist movement, for women’s suffrage, in the civil rights movement, and in making congregations welcoming to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. We are now doing the work of antiracism and anti-oppression and are becoming ever more aware of the danger of ageism. Yet, there is a very large group of Americans, I dare say in our very midst, who continue to be stigmatized and segregated. This group includes men and women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native and European Americans, and people of every ethnic identity. This group includes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folks. The age of these people can vary from the very young to the very old.

Twenty percent of Americans suffer from clinical depression, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses. Psychiatric disorders are the number one reason for hospital admissions here. People who suffer from a mental illness are the most stigmatized of any group. When asked to rank twenty-one disabilities, Americans put mental illness at the very bottom. It should come as no surprise that new Surgeon General reported that two-thirds of Americans suffering from mental disorders never seek treatment because they fear the stigma. Too often, those with mental illness are made to feel like they have a character flaw. “Crazy” behavior brings a terrible stigma.

My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Mom died four years ago, but she might come back to haunt me tonight because she would be terribly embarrassed and angry from my mention. She was confused and knew something was wrong During her last years, but she did not want anyone else to know. This very weekend, Alison, my wife, went to be with her father. His dementia intensified rapidly this winter, and he can no longer stay alone. His wife was going to be out of town. Dementia is not commonly considered a mental illness, but it carries a similar stigma.

More people suffer from a mental illness than those with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, or arthritis. Not so very long ago, society believed those with a mental illness was possessed by the devil or an evil spirit. Others saw it as a curse or a punishment from God. More recently, people with mental illness were thought to have a character flaw or lacking enough willpower to pull themselves together. They were seen as too weak-willed to withstand the normal rigors of life. However, medicine today assumes that mental illnesses are largely the result of functional abnormalities in the brain.

Most education about mental illness 30 years ago, when I was in the seminary, is now obsolete. Today we understand that mental illness is a malfunction of the neurotransmitters of the brain. It is a biochemical imbalance, not moral weakness in the heart or soul. Yet, ignorance continues to fuel prejudice and reinforces stigma. We need to accept that a mental illness is an illness. We have become aware that an imbalance in our bodies and in our minds can increase the likelihood that we will have an illness like diabetes or heart disease. It is time that we understand the same is true for mental illnesses.

A sufferer wrote, “Mental illness is biochemical. It comes in many different ways. You can hear voices, be totally paranoid, be afraid to talk to somebody. You can be so scared to walk outside your door that you want to die.” Another person wrote, “It is not demon possession. It is just a chemical imbalance you can’t control without getting the right help for it.” When people heard about today’s subject. Many suffering from mental illness sent emails and notes.

During the civil rights movement in the late fifties and sixties, people started to think that maybe the mentally ill might also have civil rights. More recently, the emergence of new medications has enabled people with mental illnesses to gain more control over their lives. Still many old myths about mental illness continue to exist.

Myth: Mental illness does not affect the average person.
Reality: No one is immune. 35 million Americans have some form of mental illness in any given six-month period.

Myth: Most people who struggle with mental illness live on the streets or in mental hospitals.
Reality: Two thirds of such Americans live in the community.

Myth: Children do not get mental illness.
Reality: 12 million children and adolescents suffer diagnosable mental illness.

Myth: Mentally ill people are dangerous.
Reality: Mentally ill people are more often the victims of violence than the perpetrators.

Myth: If you have a mental illness, you act crazy all the time.
Reality: People suffering from even the most severe mental illness are in touch with reality as often as they are actively psychotic. Many quietly bear the pain of mental illness without ever acting “crazy.”

None of this will change unless we change our attitudes–unless we work to change society. It takes time to get used to those we experience as different. We may feel uneasy, frightened, and not sure how we should act or what we should say. We may even get frustrated when what we try does not seem to work. Let us remember, however, that those who suffer from a mental illness have far greater fears. They are often frightened of doing the wrong thing in public. They know that their behavior may cause them to be shunned or hurt.

I am a member of an interfaith clergy and lay leader outreach group. We meet monthly at the psychiatric hospital in Trenton. One of our central purposes is to try to decrease the stigma that surrounds mental illness. Our ministry makes us aware that mental illness too often does strike close to home.

Family, friends, neighbors and employers reject people with mental illness. Sufferers feel devalued in their roles as mother, father, husband, wife, worker, sibling, or child. One sufferer said that the feeling of loss predominates. Each of us can and must attack the stigma of mental illness. We need to begin building bridges to connect ourselves with those who have these diseases. Yet, the challenge seems so daunting we often cannot see how and where to start.

The challenge of building the original bridge across the Niagara Gorge in 1848 illustrates the problem of how and where to start. It was to be an extremely new design, one of the first major suspension bridges.

This bridge is still in use. Two massive cables hang between high supports with a roadbed between. It carried rail traffic between Canada and the United States. Its building was a major challenge attracting a great deal of attention. The first problem was getting the suspension cable across the gorge. There were steep cliffs on each side with the swirling water of the Niagara between them. A boat could not cross the gorge. Many engineers doubted whether such a bridge could ever be built.

Charles Ellet had a creative solution. He held a kite-flying contest. A boy from Niagara Falls, Ontario won. On a windy day, he flew a kite across the gorge on a long, silk thread. With enough wind, flying the kite was easy. The real skill came in getting the kite to descend into the arms of Ellet and his colleagues who waited in Niagara Falls, New York. A New York work crew then tied strong twine to the silk thread and signaled. A crew in Ontario pulled the doubled line back across the gorge. The Ontario crew then tied a single strand of steel wire to the twine and signaled that it be pulled back across. The crews repeated the process over several months until the silk thread had grown into two huge steel cables, strong enough to carry a suspended roadbed and two railroad lines across the Niagara gorge.

Let us remember that the same long-term patience needed to turn the silk thread into the two massive steel cables is required in our work to remove the stigma of mental illness. We must start today, because mentally ill people are in our families, congregations, and everywhere in our communities.

As Miller Williams put it: “Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard and no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”

Let us remember that the stigma associated with mental illness must be bridged. Let us further remember that there may very likely be times when we and those we love will have to wrestle not only with mental illness, but also with the stigma associated with it.

We must build these bridges with even greater patience and creativity than the one built over the Niagara Gorge. I challenge us as individuals and as a congregation to reach out and respond to this need regardless of which side of the bridge you happen to be on today. The Spirit of Love and Compassion calls people on both sides to reach out and give the process all that it deserves

AMEN.

“Today we understand that mental illness is a malfunction of the neurotransmitters of the brain. It is a biochemical imbalance, not moral weakness in the heart or soul. Yet, ignorance continues to fuel prejudice and reinforces stigma. We need to accept that a mental illness is an illness. We have become aware that an imbalance in our bodies and in our minds can increase the likelihood that we will have an illness like diabetes or heart disease. It is time that we understand the same is true for mental illnesses.”

the other night i watched a mentally ill boy on top of a transmission tower who was shot like a bird by a drunken brgy kagawad(?). such a horrible sight to watch you thought you could only see in movies. i say this is a fitting example of the phrase above as quoted by notsolostafterall. how ignorant and maybe mentally ill our society is. and what is equally disgusting is the inaction of the local authorities while the harrowing incident is taking place. i say they are as guilty as that drunken man who shot that ailing boy.

The Washington Post, a recent analysis published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics [4] found:

Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902560.html

The study found that financial relationships between DSM authors and drug companies “are especially strong in those diagnostic areas where drugs are the first line of treatment for mental disorders.” However, as the Washington Post report notes: “The analysis did not reveal the extent of their relationships with industry or whether those ties preceded or followed their work on the manual.”

In the United States, health insurance typically will not pay for psychological or psychiatric services unless a DSM-IV mental disease diagnosis accompanies the insurance claim.

Critics claim that this may have exacerbated the ever-expanding number of disease categories…

(wikipedia)

All children need some explanation and support, geared to their age, to help them understand bipolar disorder.

Bipolar Support Group

People are satisfied to judge things by their own narrow experience, never knowing of the wide world outside…

I am 26 years young. I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 two years ago. My initial reaction was very opposing. Of course, how could anyone accept the fact that you are outcast from the norms. But, a peculiar feeling has consoled me deep within, that at last, there is already a name to address to all my weird behaviors. Since then, aside from the mental therapies that i went through, i started to make extensive research about my case and was able to find out some self-help medication that doesn’t need to spend too much. I never stop to motivate myself in the light of living a normal life. No one knows except the people who care for me so much.

Though i suffered for this illness, i never thought of giving up. i spent 8 years in college and finally marched in my graduation day last march 24, this year. Imagine how grateful i was to be able to surpass all the hardships and struggling phases in my life that time. I was then so hopeful that there is a beautiful life ahead of me.

Without so much difficulty, i was able to get a job right after graduation. But, as soon as the administration found out about my condition, i was forced to face the consequence of termination. This is the first blow that i have experienced because of having this illness. They have considered me as a threat to the good reputation of their school. My only consolation is the realization that my contentious consent was for the greater good of the majority-for the students that i became attached with even just for the short span of time… i hope that one day, my illness will never be an issue or a hindrance to achieve my dreams.