Bipolar Disorder

[Lewis]

"An Unquiet Mind" by Dr. Jamison is an excellent book on the subject. I highly recommend it to everyone to read, whether there's someone bipolar in the family or no.

I read the book several years ago, along with other books, to get an idea of what my daughter-in-law battles every day of her life. It also provided insight as to what my son faces daily. My d-i-l takes lithium usually ... without it, she's been known to have the spending problem, a trait of bipolar. She has a sweet & gentle heart, when her condition is stablized with meds .... she is quite the opposite when she doesn't take meds.

One of my offspring is a police officer, with training in hostage negotiations. This offspring has read "An Unquiet Mind" and has used the knowledge from that book with delicate negotiations situations.

I am glad you read it, when I read it, it gave me a great understanding of who I were. Plus I could identify with her on a lot of things, being that Dr. Jamison is Bipolar herself, I understood her.

 

[AirDancer]

The book really is excellent. I understand some of what my son & daughter-in-law described as to her health state...but "An Unquiet Mind" illuminated the various aspects of bi-polar.

In order to make sure my d-i-l takes her meds...my son initiated tea time ... it's at the same time each evening, and during this time, he doles out the meds. It's a special time, just for the 2 of them...and it has worked quite well.

 

[Lewis]

Yup Lithium is my friend

 

[Christ_empowered]

I'm back on daily Abilify. An ex-shrink went to probate court in an attempt to have me put in the loony bin for a week or two. Didn't work. However, they struck a deal in which I either went in for a talk and got back into voluntary treatment, or I would be hospitalized. Lame.

So, Abilify it is, every single day for the foreseeable future. I'm trying to keep the dose reasonable (15mgs--mid-point between high and low) until I see my shrink again. The mental health people said it wasn't an emergency, so I could just take however much I needed to stay out of the local mental hospital.

Bipolar isn't fun.

 

[shfam]

2 medicines that have really helped me are Lamictal and Saphris. They were the only medicines that I could use that didn't have severe side effects such as weight gain or couldn't get out of bed or severe tremors. Hated those.