This was a mind-brain problem of the first order. Here is a summary. Someone else may benefit from this account:
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EXPLANATORY NOTE ON MY MANIC-DEPRESSIVE ILLNESS

The following piece was written for a secular government institution. I have no doubt that prayer, religious scripture, my belief in God and the meaning system I derive from that belief have been an invaluable source of help to me, but they were not mentioned in the following statement. At the same time, were it not for chemotherapy and the lithium and fluxoxamine that I was given by psychiatrists, I seriously doubt if all the religion, pop-psychology and TLC would have been any use at all. Values and beliefs went hand-in-hand with mainstream psychiatry and the tools of chemotherapy. But without the latter, I have serious doubts of the value of the former.
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A. Preamble:

1. I would like, in the following, to outline my experience both long-term and in recent years with manic-depressive illness to provide interested readers, my G.P. and any government body assessing my illness with an adequate information base for their varied and specific purposes. In this case the information is intended to help evaluate my application for continuance on the Disability Services Pension at the age of 60. More recently I have come to see this experience as my personal ‘horror story’ and from time to time I submit it as such at various sites on the internet or to other parties for other reasons. This statement may be a little too clinical for some readers; it may be lacking in pizzaz-adventure-and-excitement for others, but it contains its own degree of very real horror--the only horror that I have tasted in life. This is no fantasy creation to stimulate middle class readers and help them find an avenue for escape into print.


2. After half a dozen episodes, varying in length from several days to several months, of manic-depressive illness between 1963 and 1980, I was treated with lithium carbonate in Launceston by a German or Austrian psychiatrist. I have been on lithium now for twenty four years. My mood swings, now in 2004, take place, for the most part, at night with the death wish still part of the experience. The symptoms that affect my daily working capacity are fatigue and psychological weariness, especially after a night of light sleeping, tossing and turning and the resulting feeling that I have not slept at all. Dryness of the mouth and short term memory loss also seem to affect my daily life now after 40 years of the onset of this disorder. Perhaps these symptoms are a result of the eight ECT treatments I had as far back as late 1968. Feel free to contact my psychiatrist, Dr. R in Launceston or my G.P. Dr. Z, for more details and a professional assessment. I have discussed my case with Drs. R & Z for four years and they would both be happy to discuss my case should you want any clarification and elaboration of the issues and medical assessments involved. I have no trouble being quite transparent about my case since I am not looking for a job any more.

It seemed appropriate to provide some detailed statement, a statement that expands on the information provided on official government forms or the casual off-the-cuff descriptions that I give to friends occasionally. Since the issue of this bi-polar illness is a complex one, varies from person to person and has come up many times over the more than forty years that I have had to deal with its symptoms in my working life, I write what follows from a perspective of “40 years on...” It is difficult to characterize, to summarize, my condition, but it is useful to try. I hope the account below may be of use to anyone assessing my application for a Disability Services Pension or simply wanting a more detailed description of my experience with what is now called a bi-polar disorder.

B.Long-term 1962-2002:

1. Process 1:

There seems to be a process, one that I experience on a daily basis even now in which I cross from normal behaviour to some abnormal extreme. I would call the present behaviour symptom a tedium vitae, a fatigue with life feeling. It only occurs after midnight. Due to this "process" over the last forty years in a much more accentuated form until 1990, it has been difficult to define just where I was at any one time along that 'normal-abnormal' continuum. This was true at both the depressive end and the hypomanic end of the spectrum. It is difficult, therefore, to actually name the number of times when I have had major manic-depressive episodes, perhaps as many as eight, certainly as few as four, in my whole life, until the last brief episode in 1990 when I went off my lithium for between one and three months.

At the hypomanic end there were experiences like the following: "violent emotional instability and oscillation", "abrupt changes" and "a sudden change in a large number of intellectual assumptions."1 Mental balance, a psychological coherence between intellect and emotion and a rational reaction to the outside world all seemed to blow away, over a few hours or a few days, as I was plunged in a sea of what could be variously described as: emotional heat, intense awareness, sensitivity, sleeplessness, voluble talking, racing mental activity, fear, excessive and clearly irrational paranoia--and in 1968 virtually total incoherence at times--at one end of the spectrum; or intense depression, melancholia, an inner sense of despair and a desire to commit suicide at the other end. The latter I experienced from 1963 to 1965, off and on; the former from 1964 to 1990, on several occasions.

2. Process 2:

The longest depression was in 1963 and 1964 with perhaps two six month periods from June to November and July to December, respectively. The longest episode of hypomania was from June to November 1968. The hypomania in 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1990 were treated quickly with medication, although the 1978 episode, beginning in January, seemed to last for at least three or four months and had a mostly depressive component. I had no experience of this variously characterized illness in childhood. It was not until I was 19 that any characteristics of this illness became apparent in my day-to-day life. My episodes seemed to be quite separate tendencies; hypomania often lead to depression and vice versa. In the 1978 episode, elation and depression followed each other within a two to three month period. Clearly, in the episodes in the late '70s, fear, paranoia and the extremes of depression seemed to be much less than those of the 1960s.

There are a variety of manic-depressive profiles, different typicalities. It is bipolar because both ends of the spectrum, the mood swings, were experienced over the period 1963 to 1990, twenty-seven years. Thanks to lithium the extremes were treated by the time I was 36 years of age. It took another ten years for me to fully accept the lithium treatment. From time to time I tried to live without the lithium. Such, in as brief a way as possible, is the summary of my experience over the years. The account thusfar has none of the fine detail that I could include like: mental hallucinations, specific fears and paranoias, electroconvulsive therapy, psychiatric analysis and diagnosis, experiences in and out of several hospitals with a great number of people, situations and, looking back, humorous and absurd events. I would like, now, to focus on my more recent experience of the last several years.

C. Short-term 2002-2004:

In 2002 Dr. R, my supervising psychiatrist in Launceston, suggested I go onto fluvoxamine in addition to the lithium treatment. Fluvoxamine is an anti-depressant. The fluvoxamine removed the blacknesses I had continued to experience at night, from about midnight until, say 7 or 9 am. The death-wish has always been associated with these blacknesses. With the fluvoxamine, gradually the blacknesses, the depressions, disappeared. The death wish remained, although the dark and debilitating feelings were at last removed. Only the tedium vitae remained. After forty-two years of periodic bi-polar disorder, the worst symptoms seem, at last, to have been treated.

D. Concluding Statement:

This brief and general account summarizes both the long history of this illness and where I am at present in what has been a life-long battle. I think it is important to state, in conclusion, that I possess a clinical disorder, a bio-chemical, perhaps even an electro-chemical, imbalance, still only partially understood by medicine, having to do with brain chemistry. Two to three percent of the population suffer from this illness and, for me, the extreme symptoms are now virtually treated by lithium carbonate and fluvoxamine with a residue of symptoms remaining which I have described briefly above.

The main problem now, in 2004, within the constellation of the residual symptoms associated with this bi-polar disorder, is getting to sleep and staying asleep. I often do not get to sleep until 2 am or after. I then wake up to urinate at least twice before I get up in the morning. Getting back to sleep each time is an aspect of this problem. So it is that by morning I am often exhausted, fatigued, worn-to-a-frazzle, having slept little and lightly. If, of course, I can sleep in until 9 to 11 am I am okay. I am certainly in no condition to go to a job, a place of employment to do full or part-time hours unless the hours were adjusted to my condition. And the nightly death wish, as I'm sure you can appreciate, is certainly not conducive to my overall psychological health and employability, although I do not want to overemphasize this. I really do not find it a problem; after so many years it is like an old friend.

In five years I will be 65 and will go on the Australian Pension. I have not worked in full time employment for the last five years. I would like to remain on this Disability Services Pension that I have been on now for two years(5/'02 to 5/'04). Although I have been treated for the worst side-affects of manic-depressive illness, I have little energy or enthusiasm for what would be five years of employment before full-retirement(the next DSS Review of my case is in 2007). My short-term memory loss often feels like the beginning of a dementia condition, although I had a memory test administered in 2001 at the Medical Services clinic in George Town and it did not indicate dementia. My wife, though, who knows me well and experiences the affects of this memory loss in our domestic arrangements has been very concerned for my health and well-being for several years now.

If you want to draw on the opinion of my wife, my G.P. and/or my psychiatrist, I am confident they each will provide opinions, medical and personal, to support the evidence I have provided in this written statement. In 2004 I was granted a part-pension by the Canadian government and in 2009 I will receive the Australian Pension. After a lifetime of struggling with this bi-polar disorder and several years now on the Disability Services Pension, it is my view that it would be unwise for me to be taken off the list of people with an official disability. In the few years remaining until my formal retirement onto the old-age pension here in Tasmania in 2009 it is my view that I should remain on this Disability Pension.

I hope the above provides, with any required formal application and the statements of doctors,' friends and/or relatives, a sufficient information base for you to get an accurate picture of my disability and then to make any assessment of my condition that is required.

Sincerely

Ron Price
April 2004

Dear Ron,
Sad situation. and I too am Australian and not proud of any of the system here because it is they whom are symptomatic with more disorders than Bi-polar!
Have you considered the neuralstatic devices and treatmentst offered at QUIT in Queensland as their reaserch deals far more indepth with bipolar disorders than to simply label or drug treat to help patients simply cope with them!
The device is so senitive that women must not take the contraceptive pill for at least 2 month prior to treatment, as the neural blankets within the pill stuff all the readings up and treatment becomes impossible?
The device is merely vertigo based, as is the treatment, and if done correctly has a 100% cure rate which is impressive for a non drug based treatment of bi-polar disorder?

It's use became public property in 1997, and I am not sure if it is still there or overseas! But then who knows what the drug companies do with wonders like this one nowadays!
If you can't find it at QUIT, a friend of mine, whom is a very emminent psychologist, may be able to track it down for me at your request!

Jasper

Anything more you can find on this would be appreciated.

You again Bob: I'm glad you, as I, like to learn as well as teach here.
Interesting subject psychololy: but I told you I was kicked out of University for knowing to much from a lack of conventional eduction...but not lifes!
This device intrigued me very much also, as for 20 years of my life, my eyes and ears would bleed profusely just from trying to read the local newspaper. And if tried to continue past this blood piont mentioned, I go into a coma and have complete TML for months at a time.
Now my little problem, which wasn't as unusal as one might think, was caused by a brutal step-father bashing me in the side of my head with hit clenched fist when I was 10 years old: and up until then I was a very highly intelligent and extraordinary sportsperson for my age!
Now moving on:
The eyes do more than simply sense our environment, as they balance all neurophysical forces and effects within and without this body call me. In actual fact the spectrum of light/s the eyes abosorb from both outside and inside our minds can have a catasrophic impact within if the retina's are scared or damamged in any way due to external physical force.
I will not go into too much detail here other than to say neuro chemical stimuli is boilogically attended within the brain by optical means...not physical matter! And yes it is mind over matter, but light is always our source of all balance!
See Ear/Brain versus barometric/neurometric forces also for details!

Biologists and all discipline of or within, and neuroscienctists, are yet to determine how our eyes even get to where they are in the first place.....and I mean both in their conception and complimentry perfuction!
Or Merleau Ponty's definition of flesh if you like, just before his brain collapsed and it killed him(FACT)!

My 20 year optical struggle was self cured by closing my eyes and seaching within: and this lead me to attend a local optimitrist here Australia by the name of Peter Knight, whom's a very switched on eyes specialist. My total cure was a mere pair of light reducing transition glasses with lenses also optically adjusted to quell the distortion between my way above 20/20 vison in the right eye, and the much lesser 20/20 vision in the left one due to optical scar tissue.

The brain balance between left and right hemispheres has a central neural switch location which clicks to either/ or R/L, dependent on the set task before the owners eyes (S or T). And this switch ruminates if the optical input or neraul fibre is either damged, or the wrong genetic eye filters (colour) are attached...yes, your eyes and their colour are fatalistically mishaped or mapped long before your fetal conception, which is very very interesting.....magic does happen, or simply become reincarnated!
See Rod and Cones and neuro-optical diagrams for insight and further details!

Yes Bob this is fact, my fact, and very very real!
I am very brief here to save Ron the discomfort here of a possible defunct technique of my hope, which I myself argued into existence for no better reason than my own selfish problems which compounded in 1996. And I had no psychological training whatsoever to do so..... until afterwards when I applied my now very open mind to study convention and to quell it's drug stated waffle well after this device was concieved.....and I was removed from it nothing more than a real fact (of me) refuting all dead facts (of them).
Hopefully this device and it research has continued to evolve as did I, but if it hasn't, then I have just given you or other the key means to undo all lights dirty little secrets in regard to many psychotic states of mind!

I shall say no more but everything, and good luck Ron as I am truly sorry this wasn't brought to you attention a long long time ago.
Be very careful with Lithium and Tricyclic based drugs as they are very dangerous to all free wills: See the contraceptive pill which is bio-butchering all female neural matter.
And in my very alchemistic opinion, St John Wort or Resuce remedy along with a good pair of sunglasses would be far remedially better than those drugs they're feeding you now Ron!
But what a big mouthed idiot like me know anyway?

Respect Always
Jasper

Dear Jasper

Who is this Ron you are talking to.

The optical means to balance the brain and create a bridge over the part of the brain that makes it difficult to learn as we ll as we might is an interesting part of what I was writing in my present project. I left it largely out of the headgear design but mentioned the 90s devices that used that approach. I think it is similar to what you are talking about.

I focused instead on Harmonics as a means to enlightenment transfer and the connection to other technologies. But the white light often is the sign of it happening.

The beta brainwave game is available to teachers in Ontario I hear (from my niece who is a part of the hoity toity private school associated with Upper Canada College (Branscombe Hall). It is based on Yoga and I think it would help people in early stages of Bi Polar as well as ADHD.

Harmonics is a good start but ears get in the way, and it's not pure ressonance: nor is white light pure light!
Black is the total lack of lights penetration and therefore black refrains and constrains all pure light :Black therefore, is lights purest essence as white light is in oppositional to all others but black!
And don't pull some grey lights matter into this either, as I'm rearranging your logic into a straight line here.

Think more deeply as you are learning very well Grasshopper Huckleberry as I Kissed your sweet mouth aslo.
Rons my imaginary friend up there at the top of this page, but then so are you down here....can't help but crack myself up in the middle sometimes in silly little far too serious a life of mine!

Respect Jasper

Poor Old Merleau Ponty...all he need ed was too more female brains cells to complete his miserable little lifes work before his head blew up alone....so sad!

Dear Jasper

Methinks you have not seen the white light or done any disciplined work in meditation. And the work on Hank Wesselmann at the University of Illinois to get him to the 40MHZ brainwavelength is how the harmonic achieves it in my design. You might reember the beta feedback rage of the 70s or 80s or you could look up Suggestopaedia and the work of Milan Ryzl and biophysics whenever you get out of the tree you and your monkies are hanging out together.

Or you could keep playing games and trying to put others down as your pants eerily do likewise.

Here a beta idea: let's miro-wave Bob cerebellum:Poooooffffff*********,,,,,dust!
I don't play games, as all these subject matters here at this site are too high up my tree for your little spank the monkey ploys! Your kinds flipant wet monkey fur from para-peristalsis, caused by primordial poeritonitis (eating too much slime), dribbles anywhere and everwhere!
If you'll consider in retrospect Bob, you'll see I wear my collar very tightly in all discipilines: and never as the same old dead conversation going on over and over and over...yyaaaawwwnnn..like in your life!

Collars credo

Come to me with new fruits of life,
and I'll kiss you, I must:
Come to me with dead men talking,
and I'll blister it's first
than piss on your dust!

You've just been baptised God
Bob's wet dust...just still dust

in no respect Jasper

it's been more than two months since i've been at this site. interesting to read all the responses and discussion. rather than writing about my mental illness in more detail in prose form, i will include some prose-poetry below:
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the place i was


robert lowell in america and frances webb in australia suffered from mental illness from the 1950s to the 1970s. their illness was protracted and deep. my own, over a period of about fifteen years(1964-1980), consisted of six episodes which seriously troubled my life for about six years and mildly for another ten. as a result, my sense of kinship with these two poets is the source, the inspiration, for this poem.
-ron price, 10:10 pm, friday, 2 february 1996.


....the great ardours of life don’t lie merely in poetry and the novel. there is, in the naked disorder of life, with its monotonies, petty bedlams and disparate imageries, the hand of the master-artist...daily the cross is carried....art is the servant of life not vice versa. -frances webb in god’s fool: the life and poetry of frances webb, michael griffith, harper collins, 1991, p.295.

grey rooms and waiting, depression
and confused emotions for a quarter
century, a veteran of mental wars, wards,
medication: how did you stand it?
the swarms of images tossed up
by your uncalendared dreams,
the women passing by, walking by,
the endless doctors’ rounds, the turnip and
cabbage cafeteria-style from early morning.
the walking, so much walking in search
of some holy grail, some peace, ease. so
many big buildings and long halls, always
the urinals and beds, beds, beds, ects,
a frightening sense of madness and going
out to home, to return, to wait, endlessly wait.

as your eyes wandered, engrossed in delicacies
upon sacred seas, humbly and utterly lost in
the mystery beyond mysteries amidst that
tormented landscape: how did you write poems
that towered like whirlwinds of words, unintelligible
but convincing, springing out in sudden clarity,
retreating into obstinate darkness. this is the landscape
of modern man; this is the place i was, without poetry, then.

ron price
2 february 1996
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mental illness

over a lifetime of pioneering service i ran across a number of baha’is who suffered from a history of mental illness in one form or another. beginning with my own mild hypomania as far back as the start of my pioneering experience in the spring of 1963 and not-so-mild depression in the fall of 1963, continuing on through the various towns i travelled through and taught in as a pioneer in both canada and australia, and then several iranians1 and australians whom i got to know in perth. just this last weekend, an australian here in tasmania, told me of his long history of mental illness. -ron price, pioneering over three epochs, unpublished manuscript, 2000; and 1 dr. payman, a melbourne psychiatrist who was a baha’i, in 1999 told me about the negative affects on mental health of the iranian refugee experience as evidenced by several patients he had had.

the world of mental illness
was transformed in those
four decades, but still there
were the sufferers whom i
met from place to place with:
their acute sentitivities,
their talents and abilities,
their capacity to talk and
understand life’s complexities.
a writer, a pianist, a holder
of sixty part-time jobs in his
life. good-grief charlie brown,
could they all talk and talk,
all on the perifery but accepted
in the centre1 when they could handle
the music. the cause attracted all kinds
and the mentally ill, a loosely defined
group, were found far and wide in society.

ron price
1 february 2000

1 the term ‘centre’ and ‘perifery’, used in the social sciences, is an apt one to describe those who were active and those who were inactive in the baha’i community.
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cinematic commentary

the ken kesey(1935-2001) novel one flew over the cuckoo’s nest was published in 1962. the book was written in 1959, the year i became a baha’i. this was the year i went pioneering and the year, i can see now in retrospect, that i first experienced the signs of bi-polar disorder. by the time the film version came out in 1975 my first severe bi-polar episodes had come and gone. dejected institutional submission, one of the main problems faced by the patients in this film/book, was certainly not a problem i faced in the five months i was institutionalized in four hospitals from june to november 1968 for my manic-depressive or schizo-affective disorder as it was also called. the film consistently ranks in the top 15 of the greatest american films. although i was critical of the film, as was kesey, for the image it presented of mental hospitals, i did feel the book and the film was a relevant companion piece, a strangely cinematic commentary on my own experience, of the mental illness i faced in the sixties and seventies.-ron price, pioneering over four epochs, december 21, 2004.
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retaining their living voices

in the spring and summer of 1937, in the first months of the first teaching plan, the novice poet robert lowell left harvard university, quarrelled with his father and drove down to tennessee where he first met the accomplish essayist allen tate. the story of lowell's career is the story of his attempt, a recurring one in the history and tradition of poetry, to move that art form as close as possible to experience, experience of the mind or society. so much of the poetry written in the last sixty-five years is strongly centred in this tradition. certainly what i write is fixed there and tries to attain the personal vibrance that lowell reintroduced into american poetry particularly in 1959 in his book of poetry life studies.

lowell's relationship with tate shaped lowell's writing life. in a similar way my relationship with roger white was a significant shaping force, in quite different ways of course, in my life. this literary friendship has enduring interest for me based as it is on personal attraction, a quasi-professional commonality and the same religious affiliation. the tracks of influence are often faint and often strong; the stresses and exasperations that mark the lengthy friendship between lowell and tate are absent. and now that white has left this mortal coil for ten years i like to think white's influence is part of that leaven that leavens the world of being and furnishes the power through which the arts of the world are made manifest. for, like lowell, i like to think that in my poetry the dead retain their living voices. -ron price with thanks to william doreski, the years of our friendship: robert lowell and allen tate, university press of mississippi, jackson, 1990, pp.3-11.

there was a popularity, a proclivity,
for mental instability
among the poets of that generation
in the sixties when i came of age.1

not that poetry was in my veins
much back then in '65
when i was fighting depression,
but i'd caught it in my genes
on my mother's side
and then, perhaps, the bomb
putting us all on the edge
of annihilation, especially in '62
when we came closest of all,
precipitated the sense of crisis
that underpinned the eventual
poetic explosion in my life.

1 between 1962 and 1974 many famous poets committed suicide or suffered from mental illness: d. schwartz, r. lowell, john ransom, s. plath, t. roethke, r. jarrell, john berryman, among others.

ron price
17 august 2002
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men for the transitional age

just after i moved to ballarat in mid-march 1976 for a three year stint as a lecturer in social sciences and as a member of the embryonic baha’i community of ballarat, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest swept the five top categories of the academy awards.1 this film, starring jack nicholson, was based on a book by the same name, published in 1962 and written by ken kesey. it was one of the definitive books for people coming of age in the early sixties, as i did back then. i was just entering the outer fringes of my own episodes of manic depression at the time. it would be another four years, after that award night, before my own mental illness was controlled with lithium carbonate in 1980 and with the help of prayers at the baha’i world centre. -ron price with thanks to patrick mcgilligan, jack’s life: a biography of jack nicholson, ww norton & co, ny, london, 1994, p. 275.

you always seemed to play yourself, jack,
a star for a transitional age: an alter ego
for men and an appeal to women at a time
of sexual confusion in a film which blended
tragedy and hilarity. i was a man for this age
of transition, too, jack, like you, like you.

my life had blended tragedy and hilarity
for i had my cuckoo’s nest1 and learned
to laugh while playing myself in many
different roles not, of course, in films,
but in life at both ends of the world.

you depended on women and their support,
as you explained in one published interview.2
you needed to please them; you needed them
to survive: and it was the same way for me.
we could not have made it otherwise, eh jack?

while shining was making its entry3
you were holding up the mirror
to america’s disturbed psyche
and your own darkening world
as the house was talking about
the signs of universal anarchy:
i was finally sorting out my
cuckoo’s nest, at long last.


1 in this poem i use the term ‘cuckoo’s nest’ to refer to ‘mental illness’.
2 ibid., p.288.
3 the film shining was released in 1979.
ron price
25 june 1999
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As not everybody here has a good idea of what bipolar disorder implies, I'll add an article about resolving bipolar disorder with systemic coaching....

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What is Bipolar Disorder?

People with Bi-polar Disorder experience cycles of depression and mania that are also called manic depression, endogenous depression, cyclothemia, cyclophrenia and cyclic depression. The term Bipolar Disorder can be applied to a single episode of either depression or mania, to recurring depressive episodes, or to a cycle of depression and mania. Although symptoms of bipolar disease are usually managed with medication, systemic life coaching can provide great assistance.

Bipolar disorder is often associated with entangled family relationships, trauma and emotional incest. It is characterized by sequential phases of elation and depression.

Manic phase
feeling euphoric, elevated, or "high"
agitation, irritability, restlessness
racing thoughts, talkativeness
sleep disorders
inflated self-esteem; poor judgment
reckless activities with painful consequences
delusions or hallucinations

Depressive phase
feeling depressed, low or "down"
feeling melancholy and hopeless
feeling guilt and worthless
difficulty concentrating or making decisions
low self-evaluation
low interest in daily activities
withdrawal from family or friends
suicidal thoughts, plans or attempts

How is Bipolar Disorder diagnosed?
There is no diagnostic test - only human evaluation. Personality swings may be noticed in early adulthood. Symptoms of bipolar disorder may be similar to schizophrenia, anxiety or depressive disorders or substance abuse. It is sometimes associated with food allergies.

Why do some People have Bipolar?
The symptoms of bipolar disorder are often related to identity conflict, a common consequence of poor parent coaching and emotional incest. A person showing bipolar symptoms associated with identity conflict expresses at least two partial personalities, and swings between those two persona.

A person with identity conflict often makes decisions or promises in one persona, and forgets or denies those decisions and promises when the other persona is active. As these people are likely to become bored with only one task, they may try to find separate tasks for each persona. They may excel as project managers.

Typically, people expressing bipolar symptoms have identified with two people who are or were in conflict with each other. The role models for the two sub-personalities are typically parents or guardians. For example, if one parent was depressed, and the other aggressive, a child may attempt to show allegiance to both parents - with his or her life.

If one parent was missing or dead, a child perceives the missing parent through the eyes of the remaining parent. If the remaining parent dislikes or detests the missing parent, the remaining parent may alienate the other parent, in the mind of the child. A parent's desire to help an adult child with bipolar symptoms can delay the development of that person.

Treatment of Bipolar Disorder
After diagnosing bipolar disorder, most doctors prescribe medications to help the person manage his or her emotions. The most common medications prescribed for bipolar disorder are lithium and Thorazine (chlorpromazine). Another treatment is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Systemic coaching and family therapy can lead to better mood stability, fewer hospitalizations and improved functioning.

Side Effects of Lithium
Increased frequency of urination or lost bladder control is more common in women than in men. Patients may experience increased thirst; mild nausea and trembling of hands.

Side Effects of Thorazine (Chlorpromazine)
Increased constipation; decreased sweating; dizziness; drowsiness; dry mouth and congestion.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
ECT is the passing an electric current through the brain to cause a convulsion. Electroshock involves passing an electric current from 70 to 600 volts through the brain for 0.5 to 4 seconds. Electroshock is generally used to treat patients with depression, mania and some schizophrenic syndromes, and for people who do not respond well to, or abreact to, medications.

Side Effects of ECT
Electrocution, brain damage, memory loss, increased distractibility, difficulty with multiple tasks, trouble with arithmetic and language, nausea and headaches are all associated with electroshock. Read Electroshock by Dr John Breeding.

Coaching People with Bi-Polar Disorder
Systemic coaching and psychotherapy can help support and guide people with bipolar disorder, and can lead to better mood stability and functioning. This may include cognitive behavioral therapy, family therapy and systemic coaching. This can help people with bipolar disorder learn to change inappropriate thoughts and manage emotions.

Systemic Coaching
Systemic couple coaching and family coaching can reduce the levels of stress and distress and the possibility of emotional incest within families that may either contribute to the disease, or who benefit from having a person in the family with bipolar symptoms.

Hmmm...

How is Bipolar Disorder diagnosed?
There is no diagnostic test - only human evaluation. Personality swings may be noticed in early adulthood. Symptoms of bipolar disorder may be similar to schizophrenia, anxiety or depressive disorders or substance abuse. It is sometimes associated with food allergies.

BiPolar will be diagnosed like all other psychiatric diagnoses - through extensive psychiatric assessment for the presence of symptoms described in DSMIV - A Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for psychiatric disorders. Symptoms are not similar to schizophrenia. Some people, who become very manic or extremely depressed can hallucinate when at the very extreme end of each spectrum, this is a psychotic symptom, of which a lot of psychotic disorders share. A differential diagnosis is always important to ensure no diagnosis is given incorrectly and many disorders share one or two of similar symptoms but no disorders share all of the exact same symptoms.

"The symptoms of bipolar disorder are often related to identity conflict, a common consequence of poor parent coaching and emotional incest" .... emotional incest? Please be aware of the insulting and degrading way families and people are being treated with these types of terms.

"A parent's desire to help an adult child with bipolar symptoms can delay the development of that person." it should be a crime to make statements like this.

"A person with identity conflict often makes decisions or promises in one persona, and forgets or denies those decisions and promises when the other persona is active. As these people are likely to become bored with only one task, they may try to find separate tasks for each persona. They may excel as project managers. " Have you ever been a project manager? I think there is a professional group of highly competent people out there that may have an issue with this statement.

"As not everybody here has a good idea of what bipolar disorder implies," This is a large assumption, and most certainly if true I hope nobody feels sufficiently educated by this article. Quite simply BiPolar is a mood disorder. Lithium is a highly effective treatment with well researched outcomes. Epilim is often used as well. ECT would be used in the depressive phase if it became extreme and untreatable with other means and with consent of the person, it is not a treatment in general for the condition. Why the side effects without the benefits of treatment have been recorded here and this coaching system advocated as a better alternative only irresponsible people would know.

I do not think this site should be used to promote this therapy system in respect to all topics listed. It is not an advertising site for your coaching system.

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It has been nearly three years since your response to my post but, since I just read your post tonight for the first time, I will respond briefly in the hope you still exist.-Ron
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I am not trying to promote any treatment, just rying to tell my story so that it may help others.-Ron
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Here are some recent developments in my story:
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8.1.5 This lack of public admission or opening-up can have and has, though, a number of disadvantages. I have a core of friends with whom I can share a broad range of intimacies. Mostly, though, these friends do not tend to inquire and I do not tend to expose these battles, not now nor in the past, except to a limited extent. I have little need to ‘dump’ on people, as we used to say, not after all these many years anyway. On occasion and with encouragement I do open- up. In the last three years I have been ‘coming out,’ as they say, but mostly on the internet at mental health sites.

8.2 Psycho-Social/Family:

8.2.1 My wife has a story here as long as your proverbial arm but to dwell on it, even to describe it briefly, would lead to one of the many possible tangents and their prolix labyrinths. I could go down many burrows as Alice did in Wonderland as I go about writing this statement, but I shall stay with the clinical, the descriptive, focus on my experience of BPD.

9. Creativity

9.1 Writing:

9.1.1 When I finally came to accept lithium without any mental reservations by the early 1990s; when I began, too, to see the end of my teaching career on the horizon by the late 1990s and what I hoped would be a coincidental reduction in various forms of frustration in marriage, career and community life that I had experienced in many and complex ways for decades, at least as far back as the 1960s insofar as my BPD is concerned---I began to write poetry a great deal. One could say I was obsessed; my wife certainly would use that word and I have come to accept that word as a realistic description of my behaviour, especially now that I am retired and devote all of my waking hours when possible to reading and writing. The drive to create never seems to leave me and other activities, domestic and social, serve to provide a useful backdrop, respite, diversion and alternative, coping tools and possibly crutches, to the constant demand that comes from my inner, my psychosocial world.

9.1.2 The demand to create is relentless, obsessive, compulsive and disinhibited, but, on the whole a paradoxically relaxed and energetic activity: “emotion recollected in tranquillity,� as the poet Wordsworth once put it. Since the early 1990s until this year, 2007, perhaps a total of some 15 years, the output has surprised me. Again, to go down this track and describe the process in even a cursory manner would take me into one of Alice’s borrows where I do not want to go and where I would take myself and readers away from the central theme here—this BPD.

9.1.3 Fame and fortune have not come my way, but the act of writing is enough of a motivator. The fluvoxamine, since 2001, has enabled me to work after 11 p.m. and into the early hours of the night, after 2 or 3 and sometimes as late as 4 or 5 o’clock, if I desire---without the black moods. If I wake up at 4, 5 or 6, say, after being asleep for whatever length of time, a low degree of emotional blackness/worry is present. The transition to sodium valproate has had its problems. Sometimes it looked like it would be a smooth process, but this has proved to be the case only after some several weeks of one medication and ten days of the other. As I write this my sleeping patters have become more regular than they were even two months ago. My sleeping patterns in April and May of 2007 had become more chaotic than they had been since the 1960s; they have altered again and again over the years; the need for regularizing them has not gone away although, as I say, in the last two months sleeping patterns are normalizing again. This new medication, resulting as it did in quite an unsettled sleeping pattern for several weeks, is finally giving me some steadiness, some settling, some routinization of habit and it is my hope that an old normality will routine soon.

9.2 My Creativity in a Psycho-Social Context:

9.2.1 My creativity is part of an obsessive compulsive disorder(OCD). Whatever my OCD tendencies are, they have never been treated and they have become part of who I am; I accept them, as do members of my family, as a sort of eccentricity. When brought face-to-face with them in an extreme form, as they were in the recent medication shift, when I was only on sodium valproate within this new medication package, OCD can be an extremity that can be quite frustrating to others. Emptying the garbage many, many times a day, doing the dishes to keep the counter in a pristine state, squaring all the bits of paper around the house are good example of this OCD. These manifestations of an OCD have lessened to a significant extent and are now in the normal range of acceptable social behaviour—well—mostly. I will say no more about it here. Anyone who lives with me is often troubled more by my OCD than other aspects of my poor mental health. Again, this OCD is a tangent to my BPD so I shall leave further comment out at this stage.

9.2.2 The issues of career, various frustrations and anxieties, problems in relationships that we all have in one way or another, the difficulties involved in moving from place to place as I have done over the years, stresses and strains in marriage, dealing with the ill-health of my wife and others, while important to me and to my story in a wide variety of ways are somewhat tangential to the central theme here of my BPD. They are all tangents to the main story line. I do not want to underemphasize or overemphasize these other and important aspects of my life in this statement. They are important, but as I have often said above, they are tangents to the theme, however important they may be. They have all been, each in different, complex and mysterious ways, contributing factors to my outburst of creative writing in the last 15 years(1992-2007).

10. Concluding Comment: The Road Ahead

10.1 General:

10.1.1 This brief and general account, at least brief in contrast to a whole book that some people write on the subject of their bipolar experience, summarizes both the long history of this illness and where I am at present in what has been a life-long battle. I think it is important to state, in conclusion, that I possess a clinical disorder, a bio-chemical imbalance, having to do with brain chemistry. The transmission of messages in my brain is simply or not-so-simply overactive, not smooth. With increasing medical and diagnostic skills and knowledge those with the disorder are being treated better than at any time in history, especially since the 1960s with an increasing range of mood stabilizers, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics on the market. I feel I am a success story inspite of any tendency to gloom and doom in this long essay.

10.1.2 Depending on what study you read some one to five per cent of the population suffers from this illness. The extremes of this illness as I had experienced them before 1980 were largely treated by lithium carbonate from 1980 to 2007. The prescription of lithium(1980) and the addition of fluvoxamine(2003); the changeover to sodium valproate(2007) and venlafaxine(2007) in April/May 2007 each had its own story and problematic for periods of time in the main for less than two months each. By June/July 2007, after 7 consultations with my psychiatrist in the January to July period of 2007 it was obvious that the new medication package was giving good results. My psychiatrist and I agreed that, unless some problems arose, I would not come for any follow-up visits for at least one year, until at least July 2008. This is, then, my latest medication package, my most recent cocktail, as it is sometimes called in the vernacular. There are, as I have said, other packages of medication available and many alternative treatments that people try. I tried many alternatives in my efforts to obtain healing in the years from 1962 to 1980. But in 1980 I settled on the lithium, just the other day, it seems, although it was over 27 years ago. And in the last three months I have worked out—thanks to my psychiatrist--a new and quite satisfactory alternative package.

10.1.3 The story of the history of my medication-regime change appears to be over. At least that is the message I am currently running with until some advances in chemotherapy and psychiatry come my way. As the story unfolds and my experience under this new package of pills advances I will document it here as succinctly as I can. The other factors that describe my personal situation I have outlined above and need to be taken into consideration as well to provide a thorough overview of my present medical, social and psychological context. This overview will help others in various ways, ways I have also outlined above. I have gone into the detail I have above because I wanted to give readers some idea of the extent of this illness, its subtle and not-so-subtle affects and provide a longitudinal study, the kind of study one rarely sees except at a few internet sites.

10.1.4 I really feel quite and quietly exhausted from the battle with this illness and would prefer to continue to live my everyday life quietly and in ways that my health allows. Although I now take both anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications to even out my mood disorder, the fluctuations, the fatigue and my entire sensory-motor experience has been so various both now and over the years—that long social interactions are really more than I want to bear, to engage in. I only do so as a result of my wife’s persuasion and not out of any desire on my part.

In 1999 I gave up full-time work; in 2003 part-time work and in 2005 most of my volunteer work. In the years 1999 to 2005 I took part in a wide range of volunteer activities from holding a radio program, to participating in a small singing group, to teaching in a school for seniors here in George Town, to organizing a series of public meetings, to activities that are part and parcel of my religious and social life. Now in 2007, except for some Baha’i work largely involving writing, holding public meetings of less than two hours duration and attending social functions of less than four hours length, my volunteer work has ceased.

10.1.5 Now short bursts of writing and reading, bursts which add collectively to some eight hours each day, are about as much as I want to handle, with other short bursts, as I say, in the form of public meetings, interactions with family and friends and various kinds of social activities which continue to give some variation to my life. It’s a creative milieux, one with significant meaning, not as frenetic as it was (a) just a few months ago on the lithium-luvox package and ( for most of my years as an adult. I have been left after all these years of BPD, over forty, in a quite exhausted, worn, enervated state inspite of appearances I know to be contrary to what is the reality of my situation. Those with whom I interact on rare occasions have little appreciation of the affects of my BPD. I know from many years of experience of this disorder that there is little understanding of my condition.

10.1.7 I take on the inevitable and necessary domestic activities in my home and my wife has become even more, what she has always been, the most critical person in my social interaction scene. Our last child left home over three years ago and my interaction pattern in my home, in my relationship with my wife, has altered yet again as is the case with millions and billions of other people on this planet who go through the inevitable changes along the lifespan. Various domestic activities and a variety of social interaction settings are all within my capacity for short time periods. Short periods of physical activity are also necessitated by my chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but that is a separate issue which I do not want to overemphasize or even emphasize here. Indeed, there is much in the backdrop of my lifeline which I could include in this account and I encourage readers to have a look at my more detailed narrative or memoir if they think that what I write in that longer account might be useful to them.

10.2 Retirement and The Old Age Pension At 65:

10.2.1 In two years I will be 65 and will go off the Australian Disability Support Pension(ADSP) and onto the Australian Old Age Pension(AOAP). I have not worked in full-time employment for eight years for reasons associated with this illness. I have been on this ADSP for six years. Although I have been treated for the worst side-affects of manic-depressive illness, I have little energy, enthusiasm or capacity for full-time employment or demanding social and community activity that entails many hours of interaction and long periods of listening and talking. When I do take part in such social activities it is usually because I want to please my wife of many years, now more than thirty, although sometimes I take part out of a sense of duty and social responsibility, an important part of my religious ethos. But my preference is to avoid any interaction settings that involve more than a very few hours of engaged activity.

10.2.2 I write this statement for many reasons. Initially it was for an interview with the Department of Social Security in Tasmania back in 2001 in order to obtain the ADSP. Since 2001 I have written many further drafts of this statement (a) for internet purposes at mental health, bipolar and depression sites and also ( to update that original statement because my illness is an ongoing one whose story is far from over. I trust the above outline provides an adequate information base for others to evaluate and understand my situation and/or to draw on my experience in a form that may be of use to them.

10.2.3 I apologise for going on at such length. I know from my experience of over 30 years as a teacher that some readers tire, lose interest or feel that there is a loss of relevance in the account because of its length. Still others are simply not able to read such a lengthy statement. When I post such a statement on the internet this individual, this reader, inability does not matter. But when some readers are required to read such a statement: (a) in a formal educational setting, ( as a member of a government department involved in making an assessment of my condition, © in any one of a number of other settings where an assessment of my condition requires reading a lengthy piece/essay/statement like this or (d) simply as one of their reading options in their leisure-time, the exercise proves too onerous, too uninteresting or too tedious for them.

10.2.4 This age has become a highly visual one and, I might add, a world with an auditory and sensory emphasis. Reading is only one of many ways people learn and for many not one they favour or prefer. Then, too, we all have our constellation of personal interests and I certainly would not expect everyone I meet and who knows me to take any particular interest in this statement any more than I might take an interest in some of their passions and concerns, problems and activities. We can not all be interested in everything and take part in all of the activities we are encouraged to take part in--in today’s world, if we ever could in the past in other ages and centuries.

10.2.5 I felt it was essential to place my illness and my experience of it in context, so to speak. I know there are many, indeed millions, who have problems far worse than my own. But this is my story, my disability story, briefly or not-so-briefly stated. I could say much more and I do so in my autobiography/memoirs for anyone who is interested in reading my story.

10.3 The Road Ahead: Responses to This 15,000 Word BPD Story:

10.3.1 I look forward to hearing from anyone in the weeks, months and years ahead should my experience be relevant to theirs and should they want to discuss these issues further. My friends, former colleagues and associations, the fellow members of the Baha’i community with whom I share this story from time to time and, indeed, many others who come across this account--for the most part on the internet--will each have their own individual reactions to this statement. This is only natural and to be expected. “Coming out� is a popular sport these days and, in spite of appearances to the contrary, I am not inclined to talk about my personal problems in the context of my day-to-day relationships. For the most part we fight our personal battles alone but, sometimes, with a little help from our friends.

10.3.2 When I do share some of my story, for sharing too is a more popular activity these days, I find others not inclined to be interested anyway or, if interested, they are not sure what to say and so they change the subject or I do to relieve their embarrassment. Sometimes, though not often, an engaging conversation ensures. As I say above, I am happy with whatever reaction comes my way, although some reactions require more thought and comment from me than others. Most of my ‘coming out’ takes place on the internet and in that medium I can take my time for a more considered response to whatever written reaction results from one of my postings. It’s a safer zone cyberspace, at least safer in some respects. The internet also has its pitfalls, its snares and its difficult people with whom to deal. I usually respond in writing to written reactions when readers do write to me and I tend to respond within a few days at most unless, as sometimes happens, I am simply not aware of a response that has been posted. Some people write to me, various participants at locations on the internet where I keep up a correspondence, as best I can, at some 75 mental health, bipolar and depression sites.

10.3.3 When I give this statement on rare occasions to friends, Baha’i institutions and others whom I think may benefit from what has become quite a long read at 15,000 words, there are a range of reactions as I have indicated above, but which I summarize here as: (a) no comment, ( a feeling sorry for me and telling me so, © a set of questions in writing or in person, (d) giving me advice, and (e) some combination of these four reactions. I am generally not troubled by people’s reactions after all these years, although I often have been in the past. On rare occasions someone wants to argue, to criticise, strongly assert a point of view at variance with my own, suggest I try various remedies like: drinking lots of carrot juice, praying more or using positive thinking and I have not always maintained my emotional cool, so to speak; although here, too, I am improving in my patience and my self-restraint, partly because of the new medication package I have begun in the last four months. We all have to deal with the reactions of others, of course, and these reactions are not always to our liking. Being calm, however much desired, is not always achievable or even desirable for most of us.

10.3.4 Who knows what lies ahead in my dealing with BPD? At the age of 63 I would like to put this story permanently to bed--forever, never to return to another, yet another, chapter in the long tale, the longue duree, to use a French expression. But I have my suspicions that the story is far from over. I am able to work at reading and writing for at least 8 hours in total per day in a series of small time periods most days even after all this experience of bipolar disability. I am still a functioning member of society, but only in certain quite defined and limited ways.

10.3.5 The pattern of behaviour that has become apparent after four months on this new medication package now in September 2007 is: (a) alternating periods of fatigue and sleepiness on the one hand; and energy and enthusiasm on the other—sometimes all within a few minutes; ( staying up to quite irregular hours, very often until 3 and 4 a.m. and sleeping until 9 or 10 with an hour of sleep in the evening after dinner; © a certain excessiveness/speed in speech patterns, a lack of moderation, a lack of control; an overly, overtly emotional state and over-the-topness, so to speak, which is more problematic when I am in groups that I associate with from time to time; (e) a speeding in situations that do not require speeding like: washing dishes, making a cup of coffee, and other domestic and daily activities; (f) OCD, obsessive-compulsive behaviour: straightening & squaring bits of paper, magazines & newspapers on tables and desks and other forms of tidiness much more than in previous years; (g) urinating on average every 80 minutes, (h) a general unpredictability in and fatigue with my reactions to others; and (i) a nightly dream pattern that is more extensive than ever before in my life.

10.3.6 Some of the above traits and patterns, of course, are problems everyone has in different degrees individually and in groups and hardly worth emphasizing, but they are (1) the present symptoms of my bipolar disorder and (2) a cause of concern in some ways more to my wife who has to live with me than they are to me. The significant others in one’s life are an important source of relevant feedback and since I have been on this new medication my wife has informed me on many occasions of (a) an increase in OCD behaviour, ( an increase speeding and © a general higher intensity of activity. For these reasons I summarize my symptoms here. I will return to this theme, this description of my present and recent physical, mental and emotional states and symptoms on this new medication regime, a regime I began in the first week of April 2007.

10.3.7 I have now been on this new medication package for six months(4/07-10/07) and when I have collected examples that illustrate aspects of my ongoing problems, justify and/or amplify the concerns I have expressed above or when I simply have more to say about my ongoing BPD in these early years of my late adulthood I will extend, alter, add or delete some of this document. For now, though, I shall leave this account at this juncture in time. Altering the brain and its chemistry through medication, alters so many things about one’s life that in some basic ways one becomes a different person much more so since the brain is the central data processing unit in the body. This ongoing story will be partly about that different person I have become as a result of my BPD.

10.3.8 I hope the above account is as much use to others as it has been to me in writing it over these several editions and the many drafts of the last few years. I look forward to making whatever necessary alterations to the above document as are necessary in the months and years ahead to maintain as comprehensive a story as possible.

Ron Price
Third Edition May 2007
Draft No.16.
Updated: 6/10/’07.
Age 63
No of Words: 15,400


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