"Living With Bipolar"
February 2008
Cynthia Arceneaux
Many people live everyday with a debilitating mental disorder known as Bipolar Disorder. I will show, through statistics and my own life experience, that some people can function at productive levels while some are disabled by this disease.
There has been individuals in history who have gone on to be successful in their own right. Many famous people including President Thomas Jefferson, President Lyndon Johnson, and most famous for the illness, actress Patty Duke (known to friends as Anna). These people obtained success despite the illness.
In "A Brilliant Mind" Patty Duke says the best two words she ever heard were "manic-depressive" (Duke), another name for bipolar. When the diagnosis was made it gave her something to focus on and accept. I think everyone who struggles with symptoms for a long time and finally gets a diagnosis feels the relief of knowing.
Lyndon Johnson is said to have been " a man of towering intensity and anguished insecurity, of grandiose ambition and grave self-doubt, a man who was brilliant, crude, intimidating, compassionate, overbearing,driven..." in the biography about his time in office in"Flawed Giant". (Dallek) All these characteristics are very common in a person with bipolar.
Thomas Jefferson lived between 1743 and 1826, a time during which there was no diagnosis of mental illnesses. Marguis de Chantellux describes him as; "...an American who, without ever having quited his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman."(Randall 1993) As is very common in people with bipolar, there is an element of creativity, especially mania.. Mania is when people with bipolar have excessive energy.
Bipolar is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as "being characterized by the occurrence of one or more manic or mixed episodes often accompanied by depressive episodes".
(DSM-IV) Marcia Purse defines it in layman's terms as " an illness that affects thoughts, feelings, and behavior...even how a person feels physically [known as psychosomatic presentations]. It's probably caused by electrical and chemical elements in the brain not functioning properly and is usually found in people whose families have a history of one or more mental illnesses". (Purse) Interestingly it is "a mental illness that effects the mind, not one that's all in the mind". (Purse)
Some of the common treatments for this illness can include medications, psychotherapy, and structured groups. Medications can include but are not limited to, Lithium, Lamictal, Geodon, Zyprexa, Depakote and Seroquel. Many of these medications come with very difficult side effects including weight gain and prolonged sleep. Psychotherapy has been found to be very beneficial in conjunction with medication. Support groups are also helpful. There is no cure for bipolar, only treatment for symptoms.
