Download or read book A Tale from the Depths of a Bipolar Mind written by Gray Chavannes and published by Tate Publishing. This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By July of 1995 I said 'to hell with it.' I put Kayla in her car seat and went to find some speed... Now it stuns me how sick I must have been, taking my infant daughter to a drug dealer's house. But that's the way it is when you have untreated bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Growing up, Gray Chavannes struggled more than most, exhibiting signs of mental illness at the age of nine. Through his combination of autobiography and poetry, Chavannes takes readers into this chaotic world where each day is at the mercy of mental illness and where his increasing addiction to drugs and alcohol-his method of coping-threatens to destroy him. This harrowing account gives readers a glimpse into Chavannes' reality as he struggled to block out the voice inside his head that told him he was a failure, a nobody, a loser. Unbeknownst to him, he was suffering from bipolar disorder with psychotic features, fighting invisible foes that were not there, losing whole segments of time, riding the highest highs, and falling To The lowest lows. And just when he felt that he had some semblance of control and had attained the life he wanted, he was forced to watch his dream crumble beneath him, losing his job, his home, And The ones he loved. A Tale from the Depths of a Bipolar Mind: A Journey Beyond Imagination is riveting, showing how with faith, support, And The proper diagnosis, one man finally stood up to face the demons that had long been plaguing his life.
Download or read book Mind on the Run written by Dottie Pacharis and published by Idyll Arbor. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mind on the Run chronicles a family tragedy the life and death of Scott C. Baker. It's a story of a family s efforts to help Scott through five major, prolonged bipolar manic episodes. It's the story of a suicide that proper treatment would have prevented. The book tells a compelling story of love and loss. It's a tragic account, filled with sadness and frustration, of a family s futile attempts to save their loved one. It takes readers inside the bipolar mind, a mind tormented by psychotic and delusional thoughts that erase any semblance of reality, a mind trapped in a body ravaged by irreversible damage from untreated bipolar disorder. Readers will grieve for Scott as they watch him lose his successful business, his family, and ultimately his life. Even as a broken mental health system protected Scott's civil right to remain mentally ill by refusing treatment, it rejected the fight by Scott and his family to obtain timely and humane treatment for him. When Scott was well, he tried to empower his family to help him during bipolar episodes, but the courts rejected his requests. His story shows us ways we can improve the system." -- Back cover.
Download or read book An Unquiet Mind written by Kay Redfield Jamison and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A deeply powerful memoir about bipolar illness that has both transformed and saved lives—with a new preface by the author. Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide. Here Jamison examines bipolar illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed, revealing both its terrors and the cruel allure that at times prompted her to resist taking medication.
Download or read book The Other Side of Me written by Julie Kraft and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: B&W edition (alternate cover) - In this unforgettable memoir, first-time author Julie Kraft takes readers on an intimate journey through her struggles and triumphs with bipolar disorder. No stone is left unturned. In baring her skeletons and soul, Julie offers a rare glimpse into a world that affects millions but is often misrepresented, feared, or hidden. It is Julie's greatest hope that in sharing her story she will open minds, shatter stigma, and offer help to those walking a similar path.
Download or read book Touched With Fire written by Kay Redfield Jamison and published by Free Press. This book was released on 1996-10-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive work on the profound and surprising links between manic-depression and creativity, from the bestselling psychologist of bipolar disorders who wrote An Unquiet Mind. One of the foremost psychologists in America, “Kay Jamison is plainly among the few who have a profound understanding of the relationship that exists between art and madness” (William Styron). The anguished and volatile intensity associated with the artistic temperament was once thought to be a symptom of genius or eccentricity peculiar to artists, writers, and musicians. Her work, based on her study as a clinical psychologist and researcher in mood disorders, reveals that many artists subject to exalted highs and despairing lows were in fact engaged in a struggle with clinically identifiable manic-depressive illness. Jamison presents proof of the biological foundations of this disease and applies what is known about the illness to the lives and works of some of the world's greatest artists including Lord Byron, Vincent Van Gogh, and Virginia Woolf.
Download or read book Birth of a New Brain written by Dyane Harwood and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the birth of her baby triggers a manic maelstrom, Dyane Harwood struggles to survive the bewildering highs and crippling lows of her brain’s turmoil. Birth of a New Brain vividly depicts her postpartum bipolar disorder, an unusual type of bipolar disorder and postpartum mood and anxiety disorder. During her childhood, Harwood grew up close to her father, a brilliant violinist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic who had bipolar disorder. She learned how bipolar disorder could ravage a family, but she never suspected that she’d become mentally ill—until her baby was born. Harwood wondered if mental health would always be out of her reach. From medications to electroconvulsive therapy, from “redwood forest baths” to bibliotherapy, she explored both traditional and unconventional methods of recovery—in-between harrowing psychiatric hospitalizations. Harwood reveals how she ultimately achieved a stable mood. She discovered that despite having a chronic mood disorder, a new, richer life is possible. Birth of a New Brain is the chronicle of one mother’s perseverance, offering hope and grounded advice for those battling mental illness.
Download or read book Brilliant Madness written by Patty Duke and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2010-01-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her revealing bestseller Call Me Anna, Patty Duke shared her long-kept secret: the talented, Oscar-winning actress who won our hearts on The Patty Duke Show was suffering from a serious-but-treatable-mental illness called manic depression. For nearly twenty years, until she was correctly diagnosed at age thirty-five, she careened between periods of extreme euphoria and debilitating depression, prone to delusions and panic attacks, temper tantrums, spending sprees, and suicide attempts. Now in A Brilliant Madness Patty Duke joins with medical reporter Gloria Hochman to shed light on this powerful, paradoxical, and destructive illness. From what it's like to live with manic-depressive disorder to the latest findings on its most effective treatments, this compassionate and eloquent book provides profound insight into the challenge of mental illness. And though Patty's story, which ends in a newfound happiness with her cherished family, it offers hope for all those who suffer from mood disorders and for the family, friends, and physicians who love and care for them.
Download or read book Bipolar Disorder written by Francis Mark Mondimore and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mondimore has added sidebars on fascinating details about the history of this disorder and its treatment.
Download or read book Gorilla and the Bird written by Zack McDermott and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Soon to be an HBO limited series* "Glorious...one of the best memoirs I've read in years...a tragicomic gem about family, class, race, justice, and the spectacular weirdness of Wichita. [McDermott] can move from barely controlled hilarity to the brink of rage to aching tenderness in a single breath."--Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Book Review Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital. So begins the story of Zack's freefall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often hilarious struggle to claw his way back to sanity. It's a journey that will take him from New York City back to his Kansas roots and to the one person who might be able to save him, his tough, big-hearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack's dark world. Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy Seal and his talking stuffed monkey, and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird's help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a partner who can love him back, bipolar and all. Introducing an electrifying new voice, GORILLA AND THE BIRD is a raw and unforgettable account of a young man's unraveling and the relationship that saves him.
Download or read book Bipolar Disorder written by Francis Mark Mondimore and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-02-21 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For persons with bipolar disorder and their families, here is a comprehensive, practical, compassionate guide to the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. 22 illustrations.
Download or read book Beautiful Bipolar written by Danielle Workman and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I was Bipolar. I AM Bipolar." Danielle Workman, a once blogger turned author, was faced with what she deemed terminal in her ill mind; a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. In this book she details her adventures and her experiences with this mental illness, including the bouts of mania, depression and her current thoughts on living life with it. This is a raw and real collection of truths about Bipolar Disorder, and is a beautiful tell-all novel.
Download or read book Mental written by Jaime Lowe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting memoir and a fascinating investigation of the history, uses, and controversies behind lithium, an essential medication for millions of people struggling with bipolar disorder. It began in Los Angeles in 1993, when Jaime Lowe was just sixteen. She stopped sleeping and eating, and began to hallucinate—demonically cackling Muppets, faces lurking in windows, Michael Jackson delivering messages from the Neverland Underground. Lowe wrote manifestos and math equations in her diary, and drew infographics on her bedroom wall. Eventually, hospitalized and diagnosed as bipolar, she was prescribed a medication that came in the form of three pink pills—lithium. In Mental, Lowe shares and investigates her story of episodic madness, as well as the stability she found while on lithium. She interviews scientists, psychiatrists, and patients to examine how effective lithium really is and how its side effects can be dangerous for long-term users—including Lowe, who after twenty years on the medication suffers from severe kidney damage. Mental is eye-opening and powerful, tackling an illness and drug that has touched millions of lives and yet remains shrouded in social stigma. Now, while she adjusts to a new drug, her pursuit of a stable life continues as does her curiosity about the history and science of the mysterious element that shaped the way she sees the world and allowed her decades of sanity. Lowe travels to the Bolivian salt flats that hold more than half of the world’s lithium reserves, rural America where lithium is mined for batteries, and tolithium spas that are still touted as a tonic to cure all ills. With unflinching honesty and humor, Lowe allows a clear-eyed view into her life, and an arresting inquiry into one of mankind’s oldest medical mysteries.
Download or read book Haldol and Hyacinths written by Melody Moezzi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With candor and humor, a manic-depressive Iranian-American Muslim woman chronicles her experiences with both clinical and cultural bipolarity. Born to Persian parents at the height of the Islamic Revolution and raised amid a vibrant, loving, and gossipy Iranian diaspora in the American heartland, Melody Moezzi was bound for a bipolar life. At 18, she began battling a severe physical illness, and her community stepped up, filling her hospital rooms with roses, lilies and hyacinths. But when she attempted suicide and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, there were no flowers. Despite several stays in psychiatric hospitals, bombarded with tranquilizers, mood-stabilizers, and anti-psychotics, she was encouraged to keep her illness a secret—by both her family and an increasingly callous and indifferent medical establishment. Refusing to be ashamed or silenced, Moezzi became an outspoken advocate, determined to fight the stigma surrounding mental illness and reclaim her life along the way. Both an irreverent memoir and a rousing call to action, Haldol and Hyacinths is the moving story of a woman who refused to become a victim. Moezzi reports from the frontlines of an invisible world, as seen through a unique and fascinating cultural lens. A powerful, funny, and moving narrative, Haldol and Hyacinths is a tribute to the healing power of hope and humor.
Download or read book Welcome to the Jungle written by Hilary A Smith and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An honest, relatable guide that can help you figure out how to live your life with bipolar disorder, from a bipolar author. Welcome to the Jungle focuses on bipolar people, not the diagnosis: the ways in which each person can find his or her own way through the extreme emotional states and intense experiences that we are calling “bipolar” —whether that means medication or meditation, psychiatrists or vision quests, good sleep or good all-night dancing, or a little bit of everything. Many bipolar books are too clinical, too alarmist, and too clearly written for family members and caretakers of people diagnosed with this mood disorder. Welcome to the Jungle is different. Author Hilary Smith wrote this guide because it is the book she wishes she’d been given when she was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It answers questions, points to resources, and most of all, comes from someone who understands what it’s like to be thrown off course by an overwhelming mental health issue—and what to do afterwards. Just like for everyone else, there are many, many paths that bipolar people can take in life. Learn more about how to live your own life with a mental illness using the help of the insights in Welcome to the Jungle, which covers topics such as:Wrapping your head around triggers, causes of mood swings, medications, and therapistsRecovering from mental breakdowns, manic moments, and major depressive episodesLiving your life beyond the diagnosis—and helping your family to do the same This book is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent any illness or act as a substitute for advice from a doctor or psychiatrist. Praise for Welcome to the Jungle “Among the wealth of works on bipolar, this title (wisely pulled from a Guns N’ Roses lyric) nicely stands out as a super reference for younger readers interested in or actually experiencing bipolar disorder and is also a valuable resource for professionals.” —Library Journal
Download or read book Mania written by David Healy and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-06-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative history of bipolar disorder illuminates how perceptions of illness, if not the illnesses themselves, are mutable over time. Beginning with the origins of the concept of mania—and the term maniac—in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, renowned psychiatrist David Healy examines how concepts of mental afflictions evolved as scientific breakthroughs established connections between brain function and mental illness. Healy recounts the changing definitions of mania through the centuries, explores the effects of new terminology and growing public awareness of the disease on culture and society, and examines the rise of psychotropic treatments and pharmacological marketing over the past four decades. Along the way, Healy clears much of the confusion surrounding bipolar disorder even as he raises crucial questions about how, why, and by whom the disease is diagnosed. Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy's long career, this lucid and engaging overview of mania sheds new light on one of humankind's most vexing ailments.
Download or read book The Dark Side of Innocence written by Terri Cheney and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Manic: A Memoir" comes a gripping and eloquent account of the awakening and unfolding of Cheney's bipolar disorder.
Download or read book Owning Bipolar written by Michael G. Pipich and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Essential reading, not only for the person learning to own their bipolar, but for the support system members and treatment providers walking alongside them in their journey to hope and healing.” —Sally Spencer-Thomas, PsyD, president United Suicide Survivor’s International Knowledge is power, and grasping the basics of bipolar disorder can give you the power you need to detect it, accept it, and own the responsibility for treatment and lifelong disease management. With its three-phase approach, Owning Bipolar can help you and your loved ones become experts at an illness that has called the shots in your life for too long. Now it’s time for you to take control. · The Pre-stabilization phase and recognition: confronting the causes of bipolar and the effects, including depression, anxiety, loss of energy, avoidance of responsibilities, and suicidal thoughts · The Stabilization phase and acting on it: starting effective medication, accepting the disease, and treating different types of bipolar · The Post-stabilization phase and living with it: undertaking long-term maintenance, accepting your new identity, and coming to terms with your responsibilities, and the responsibilities of your caregivers Accessible and encouraging, and accented with empathetic first-hand stories from people who share the disorder, this book is a vital companion for readers to help them understand, treat, and live successfully with bipolar. “Will provide clarity and understanding to a seemingly complex and confusing psychiatric condition.” —David B. Weiss, MD, FAPA