A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
Manic Man: How to Live Successfully with a Severe Mental Illness by Jason Wegner, with a foreword by Dr. Kerry Barnes, is a memoir of a first episode of bipolar mania and subsequent recovery. The book's prologue opens with the author's parents having called paramedics to take him to hospital. It then shifts back in… Continue reading Book Review: Manic Man
But Deliver Me From Crazy by Katie R. Dale is a memoir of living with bipolar disorder. You may know Katie from her blog, and she also contributed a story about bipolar I to my book Making Sense of Psychiatric Diagnosis. The book begins when Katie was in high school, when her illness first appears.… Continue reading Book Review: But Deliver Me From Crazy
Spiders, Vampires and Jail Keys by Brooke O'Neill is a compelling story of one woman's life with bipolar disorder. Like me, Brooke is a nurse. When she returned to work after her period of acute illness, she was able to have positive conversations self-disclosing to some of her patients who had bipolar disorder in addition… Continue reading Book Review: Spiders, Vampires and Jail Keys
In this emerging blogger post, Noose Girl of Breathing With a Noose writes about an ambulance joy ride in the context of bipolar mania. Entrance and intake processing is finally complete. Before the doctor moves me from the emergency room to the next phase of my visit, he bestows the knowledge that I may have bipolar… Continue reading Ambulance Joy Ride (Guest Post)
In this emerging blogger post, Brittany of BiPolarMania writes about experiencing manic sychosis as part of bipolar disorder. Photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash Psychosis is a mental disorder characterized by symptoms like delusions and hallucinations that indicate a break from reality. Paranoia is a common symptom of psychosis. When I was entering my final year of University… Continue reading Manic Psychosis (Guest Post)
Bring Me To Light: Embracing my Bipolar and Social Anxiety by Eleanor Segall describes her journey with mental illness, from pre-diagnosis through her work on recovery. It's written in clear, simple language, making it easy to understand for readers with no background knowledge of mental illness. She begins by talking about her Jewish heritage and… Continue reading Book Review: Bring Me To Light
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week's term is ultra rapid cycling in bipolar disorder. Before we get into ultra rapid cycling, let's take it down a notch and consider rapid cycling, which describes the frequency of switching between mania/hypomania and depression in bipolar disorder. The… Continue reading What Is… Ultra Rapid Cycling in Bipolar Disorder
In 2013 the International Society for Bipolar Disorders and the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments combed through the scientific literature and put together these guidelines for the pharmacological treatment of bipolar disorder. Treatments are classified as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd line based on the strength of existing evidence to support their effectiveness. The… Continue reading Bipolar Disorder Treatment Guidelines
We work so hard on our mental health, but sometimes we can get knocked down by an unexpected source—prescription medication. Sure, we all know that some street drugs can adversely affect mental health, but there are also a number of prescription medications for conditions totally unrelated to mental health that can trigger psychiatric side effects,… Continue reading Medications That Can Cause Psychiatric Side Effects
A primer on mood stabilizers and how they work