Bipolar News
May 9, 2006
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When change is good
Toronto Sun - Canada
... towards recovery. Fort Frances' Doug Cridland, diagnosed with
bipolar disorder at age 18, battled his illness as a teen. Once he ...
Porn Past Cost Kentucky Teacher Her Job
FOX News - USA
... Dye said she suffers from bipolar disorder and agreed to appear in
the 1995 flick because she had no home or income and her disease wasn't
being treated. ...
Maggie T conquers demons
London Free Press - Canada
OTTAWA -- Margaret Trudeau says she has rediscovered joy after treatment
for bipolar depression that dogged her for years -- and she's urging
fellow sufferers ...
Swing low, fly high: Bipolar disorder affects college students
University Daily Kansan - Lawrence,KS,USA
... Hanke’s failed attempt at a fatal flight is congruent with bipolar
disorder, a psychiatric disorder of which an estimated 300 KU students
suffer. ...
Margaret Trudeau says she endured bipolar depression
Vancouver Sun (subscription) - British Columbia, Canada
OTTAWA - Margaret Trudeau says she endured bipolar depression for years
and is urging fellow sufferers to step forward and seek treatment. ...
The other side of Amy Sky
Toronto Star - Ontario, Canada
... In Harvey's case, she has struggled with bipolar disorder for as
long as she can remember, although the illness often manifests itself at
puberty. ...
Profiles in courage
Trenton Times - Trenton,NJ,USA
... Nationwide, 7 percent of adults and children have a serious,
disabling mental illness such as clinical depression, schizophrenia or
bipolar disorder. ...
'I had developed anorexia nervosa because I was starving myself. . ...
Globe and Mail - Canada
OTTAWA -- Just two days after admitting that she has for years suffered
from a bipolar disorder, Margaret Trudeau says she has also dealt with
anorexia nervosa ...
Margaret Trudeau urges fellow sufferers of bipolar depression to
seek help
AP Worldstream; 5/8/2006
Dateline: OTTAWA
Margaret Trudeau, the former wife of Canada's late Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau, says she has rediscovered joy after receiving treatment for
bipolar depression, a condition she kept secret for years.
She acknowledged suffering the condition in an appearance Friday and
encouraged others with bipolar depression to seek help.
"I have my life back after years of struggles," she told an audience
at Royal Ottawa Hospital. "I felt I was broken for a long time and now I
feel whole. No one should suffer needlessly any more. There is help,
there is recovery."
She said her battle with postpartum depression began following the
birth of her second son, Alexandre, in 1973. She said her husband was
puzzled by her condition and did not know how to help.
"I can tell you that living at 24 Sussex was very lonely, a long
tunnel of darkness for me," Trudeau said.
During her marriage to Trudeau, she earned notoriety for escapades
such as partying with the Rolling Stones. She sought medical help, but
found no effective treatment, and struggled on her own for 25 years.
"It impacted my family life for years, it tore away at my two
marriages and ultimately the very meaning of my life," she said at a
hospital fundraising event.
"It was not until I suffered the unbearable loss of my son Michel,
followed by the loss of Pierre, that I needed and had to seek
treatment," she said.
Michel died in an avalanche in 1998, and the former prime minister
died in 2000.
Trudeau, 57, said she received treatment after she was taken to a
hospital by one of her sons.
"I'm here today to encourage others who live with mental illness to
tell them that the treatment works, that there is no shame in coming
forward for help," she said.
Bipolar disorder involves unpredictable swings from deep depression
to inappropriate euphoria. New drugs to treat the condition have been
introduced in recent years.
Trudeau is now the picture of health, with a broad smile and flashing
eyes.
"Yes, I take medication, but I also exercise, eat well, live well, I
don't abuse my body, I don't abuse drugs or alcohol, I have joy back in
my life."
Copyright 2006, AP News All Rights Reserved
This material is published under license from the publisher through
ProQuest Information and Learning Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan. All
inquiries regarding rights should be directed to ProQuest Information
and Learning Company.
Long road to mental wellness.
Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI); 5/8/2006
Byline: Patricia Anstett
Mental illness doesn't always intrude into a person's life as a
single disease with clearly defined symptoms.
Ask Dana Parker. For more than 20 years, she struggled off and on
with depression, anxiety and panic attacks.
She still managed to earn a college degree, get married, have a son
and dote on him, and hold down a job as a university admissions
counselor.
But her precariously balanced life tumbled apart when her marriage
collapsed and her symptoms snowballed into full-blown paranoia.
Dana was convinced that her home was bugged and that spies trailed
her. She spent hours in her car chasing buses, whose signs she felt
compelled to follow to pursue clues.
Today, four years since her worst breakdown, Dana, 37, of Detroit, is
healthy and happier than she has been in many years.
She is enrolled in a master's degree program in social justice at
Marygrove College and recently launched a Web site for Dig My Roots (digmyrootsfoundation.org),
her new nonprofit organization. Dig My Roots will provide support
services for mentally ill people in adult education, trade school or
college programs.
Dana's turnaround comes with help from a strong family network and a
new Wayne State University School of Medicine program that takes a
different approach to schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, at a
time when many providers have exited the field.
Though 2.5 million Americans have schizophrenia, mental hospital
closings during the past three decades often leaves them and their
families with little more than support groups and periodic psychiatric
visits to refill prescriptions.
Hers also is a story of a strong man who loves her for all her
complexity, a devoted mother determined to see her healthy again and a
10-year-old son with unusual wisdom about his mother's illness.
Dana has her own word to describe her journey.
She calls it a miracle.
She was a ballerina and a tomboy.
The younger of two girls, she was her dad's sidekick. They would play
basketball in the backyard of their stately, six-bedroom home in
northwest Detroit.
But she also took dance lessons three times a week for more than 10
years and learned good posture and refinement by attending teas and
debutante balls with the Jack and Jill service organization, "to make a
lady out of me," Dana said.
An impeccable dresser, well read and articulate, she is the latest of
several generations in her family with college degrees. Both of her
parents were Detroit Public Schools teachers.
"She was a happy child," said her mother, Mamie Parker. She saw no
early clues that her daughter someday would develop a chronic mental
illness.
Dana has attention deficit disorder, but it didn't become an issue
until high school, when she pursued a challenging math and science
curriculum at Cass Technical High School.
"She rushed through things," her mother said. "She didn't stay
focused on one task."
Dana's life changed in a single night, when she was 12.
She heard her father cry out from his bedroom. It was Dana who called
911.
Sidney Parker died five days later from a brain aneurysm, at 41.
Dana had lost her closest friend. She describes her father as "the
kind of man who could dine with the president and who also would invite
a homeless man to dinner." He bought dozens of shoes for elementary
school kids and tutored them on weekends at his home in "weekend drill
camps," assisted by Dana and her mother.
Dana became profoundly depressed and had to take medication.
Mamie Parker took Dana to a psychologist, who assured her he found no
problem, beyond the typical depression expected with mourning.
Be patient, Mamie Parker recalls him telling her.
From then on, mother and daughter were inseparable. Mamie Parker
attended her daughter's basketball games and helped with her studies.
They traveled to France and Africa.
Dana graduated from Cass and received a degree in behavioral and
social services from the University of Maryland.
She flirted with a career in law, first getting paralegal
certification from American University in Paris, and then pursuing a
pre-law curriculum at two Washington, D.C., schools before she settled
on a job as an undergraduate admissions counselor at her alma mater.
An impressive job she did on a brochure led to a series of university
committee appointments and promotion to senior admissions counselor, a
job involving considerable travel.
By then, Dana was married and the mother of a son, Zachary Wood.
After his birth in 1995, she developed anxiety and racing thoughts.
When Zachary was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal disease at age 4,
Dana became more stressed, running back and forth to his school,
doctor's offices and her job.
She started seeing a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with bipolar
disorder.
By then, her husband, an accountant, was growing impatient with her
erratic behavior and mood swings.
Dana admits to not taking medicine her doctor prescribed, because she
feared she'd gain weight.
Now, she wonders if she would have been helped more by a different
medicine, one that better fit her mental illness.
It came, a few years too late.
As her marriage of five years disintegrated, Dana became very
emotional. She grew obsessed with signs and colors. She kept a notebook
of license plate numbers, thinking each meant something to her.
"It was horrible but it was wonderful," Dana says. As much as the
images frightened her, they also brought a sense of incredible energy
and euphoria that came as her mind raced at full speed. She interpreted
billboards and bus signs as directions and felt compelled to follow
them, sometimes for hours.
She no longer hid her obsessions from her son.
They had a signal. If she winked at him, that indicated someone was
watching her.
At the same time, she helped him with his homework, taught him how to
shoot a lay-up and held down her job.
Six months after her separation in 1999, Dana met Daniel Mathis, a
friend of Zachary's basketball coach. The coach thought the two would
make a good couple.
He didn't run when Dana told him she had bipolar disorder. When she
confided that she thought her home was bugged, he had a security firm
come over and sweep the home for devices. Then he brought over his
father, a minister, to reassure her.
When that didn't help, Mathis didn't leave. "That's what is amazing
about him," Dana said. "He never got off the ride."
Unmedicated at times, or insufficiently medicated with drugs only for
manic depression, Dana slid into total paranoia in late summer 2002.
"It all came to a head one day when I picked up Zachary and took him
to a park," she said. She parked next to a car with the keys in it.
Convinced her car had a hidden camera in it, she ordered her son into
the stranger's car, over his protests.
As she drove away, the car's owner chased and stopped her. He
realized he knew her.
Seeing she was troubled, he drove her back to her car.
Dana called her mother. Fearful she would lose custody of Zachary,
she pleaded to be hospitalized.
Mamie Parker drove to Maryland immediately and arranged for a mover
to load up Dana's possessions. Dana was admitted to Detroit Receiving
Hospital in August 2002.
A team of psychiatrists diagnosed Dana with schizoaffective disorder,
a combination of the paranoid symptoms of schizophrenia with the mania,
depression and anxiety of mood disorders. They prescribed different
medicines. In three weeks, she started to feel better.
Just before Christmas, she was released from the hospital.
Her paranoia was gone.
Back at her mother's home, Dana started to recover. But she remained
tense and tentative. Her psychosis returned.
Her psychiatrist tried one drug then another until he found three
that worked.
Mamie Parker had her own idea. An accomplished quilter and
seamstress, she coaxed Dana into working on a quilt to give Zachary for
Christmas.
"It really helped me," Dana said. "Instead of focusing on all the
stimulation and people, I could focus on the quilt and its color ... I
thought back on the experience and it was like my roots pulled me
through."
Her mother, who had retired, returned to work, teaching science at
Ralph Bunche Elementary in Detroit, to buy and furnish a condo for her
daughter and grandson.
She also started to learn about mental illness.
By 2005, finally free of all her psychotic thoughts, more relaxed and
gaining confidence, Dana was stable enough to be ready for more.
She enrolled in an intensive outpatient program for people with
psychotic disorders that had just opened at Wayne State. It was started
by Dr. Matcheri Keshavan, who joined Wayne State University last year as
professor and associate chair of the Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Neurosciences.
Keshavan says early intervention can spare people from devastating
recurrences.
"The longer they go untreated, the harder it is to get them back into
the community," said Keshavan, who splits his time between Wayne State
University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
People with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders need help
with goal-setting, memory and organization skills to counteract poor
motivation and antisocial symptoms that medicines poorly address, he
said.
The program offers group and one-on-one counseling; strategies for
motivation and goal-setting, and help with drugs. A companion program is
studying children of people with schizophrenia, to look for early
warning signs in a group at higher risk of the disorder.
The work is funded with grants from the National Institute of Mental
Health, the Flynn Foundation and, recently, a $1-million, three-year
grant from the state of Michigan.
Keshavan and other experts in the field say it's too soon to know
whether early intervention and intensive therapies pay off.
"Early intervention is like motherhood; everyone will vote for it,"
said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a leading schizophrenia expert at the Stanley
Medical Research Institute, a Washington. D.C. area mental health
organization. "But the jury is still out whether it makes a difference."
"I've learned to small-scale my ideas," Dana said. "Before, my ideas
always were too broad."
Two A's and a B for fall semester boosted her confidence.
"Understanding what the illness is, is the most superior coping skill,"
Dana said.
She no longer feels shame about her illness.
Mathis, now her fiance, and son understand, too.
RESOURCES
Wayne State University Psychiatric Centers: 800-650-7837, http://brain.wayne.edu/projects.htm
Dig My Roots Foundation: 313-259-8918, www.digmyrootsfoundation.org.
WHAT IS SCHIZOPHRENIA?
Schizophrenia is a brain disease that causes persistent and often
bizarre disturbances in thought, communication, perceptions, emotions
and behavior. The average age of onset is 18 in men and 25 in women,
according to the National Institutes of Mental Health.
WARNING SIGNS
Report any of these symptoms to a medical doctor:
Behavior: Unusual posturing, excessive writing without apparent
meaning, deterioration of personal hygiene, taking long walks leading
nowhere.
Emotion: Inappropriate laughter or an inability to express emotion,
apparent indifference, especially to important situations, undue
preoccupation with spiritual or religious issues.
Thoughts and speech: Vague or irrational statements, peculiar use of
words or language, illogical or incoherent conversation.
Social interactions: Isolation, inability to concentrate.
Intellectual abilities: Decline in academic or athletic performance.
Sources: Dr. Matcheri Keshavan, Wayne State University School of
Medicine and National Institute of Mental Health
(c) 2006, Detroit Free Press.
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COPYRIGHT 2006 Detroit Free Press
This material is published under license from the publisher through
the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding
rights should be directed to the Gale Group.
YOUR LIFE: Is there a cure for my mood swings? MERCURY MEDIC.
Sunday Mercury (Birmingham, England); 5/7/2006
Byline: DR JAMES BRISCOE
Q I HAVE just been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and I would like
to know what this condition is, what the best treatment for it is and
where I can get more information about it.
A BIPOLAR Disorder (also known as Manic Depression) is a disorder of
mood characteristically comprising swings from depression to elation.
The symptoms of depression comprise pervasive sadness and
tearfulness, loss of appetite, sleep disturbance, feelings of
hopelessness, guilt and self-blame, self-deprecatory beliefs, tiredness
and, sometimes, thoughts of suicide.
If severe, people in a depressed phase find it extremely difficult,
if not impossible, to function properly and can be bed-bound.
The depressed phase may last several weeks (particularly without
treatment). It may then be followed by a phase of excited mood known as
mania or hypomania. You will experience boundless energy, feel extremely
happy and elated and be full of ideas, and your mind will be racing with
thoughts.
You may indulge in behaviour you later regret such as overspending,
being promiscuous, taking on too much or falling out with friends.
Because of their behaviour during a manic phase, some people get in
trouble with the police.
Though the initial stages of a manic phase may be welcome, sometimes
things get completely out of control and being manic is usually a very
uncomfortable experience.
In between the periods of depression and hypomania, there may be a
period of normality which can last for weeks or months.
Sometimes Bipolar Disorder runs in families. It's likely that genetic
factors increase the vulnerability to developing the disorder and other
factors (such as stress, alcohol, drugs or life events) play their part
in the development of the illness.
The standard treatment is mood-stabilising medication.
Although periods of depression should be treated with
antidepressants, this can precipitate a manic phase. Hypomania can be
treated with antipsychotic medication but relying solely on
antidepressants and antipsychotics can result in a rapid-cycling
condition whereby there are multiple swings between mania and depression
with not much normal mood in between.
Mood stabilisers (such as lithium carbonate, carbamazepine or sodium
valproate) act to iron out the extreme mood swings, thereby producing
a stabilised mood state. If successful, this can completely prevent
the abnormal mood swings and an affected individual can return to a
normal quality of life.
Many people with Bipolar Disorder are able to hold down high-profile
and demanding jobs because of the success of their treatment. Drug
treatment can be supplemented by psychological treatment.
Further information on Bipolar Disorder can be obtained from the
Manic Depression Fellowship at www.mdf.org.uk or the Royal College of
Psychiatrists at www.rcpsych.ac.uk.
If YOU have a question about health and wellbeing, write to Mercury
Medic, Sunday Mercury, Weaman Street, Birmingham B4 6AY, or e-mail
SundayMercury@mrn.co.uk
COPYRIGHT 2006 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd
This material is published under license from the publisher through
the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding
rights should be directed to the Gale Group.
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