I responded to a reader's question about how to get help for her bipolar loved one. The "sane" woman asking for help wanted to know whether her loved one really meant that he didn't want anything to do with her or whether that was the disease talking.  I pointed out to her that once the mental illness has taken hold of his brain, she has no idea who she's really dealing with. To hammer this point home, I recommended that she visit my blog at crazymer1.wordpress.com to gain a perspective about what it's like to be in the middle of a delusion and how it changes your sense of reality. Armed with this information, I hope she's brave enough to try to get her loved one back. Because while the illness is raging, he isn't really there at all. Someone else is.