Thanks, Sachin, for sending this in:
The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive
Also available online via Bittorrent.
liz | 12:47 PM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
Note he doesn’t take meds. Interesting. He would never be allowed to be a spokesperson in Big Pharma butt-kiss nation of the United States. I think it’s fantastic that the BBC is educating the population about different sides of the disorder, and different approaches to mental health without passing judgement.
Yeah, that documentary is really great. Funny and touching and sad. Thanks for the link!
Hello -
Thanks for the YouTube pieces and the mention of the Stephen Fry two-hour special. I fetched it from BT and was touched by it. Naturally he comes to Los Angeles and interviews the famous bipolars out here, especially Carrie (”Twin Danish”) Fisher and Richard Dreyfuss, about their disorders.
He throws science into the mix as well, with a discussion of the largest study of bipolar illness in the world which is now being conducted at a university in Wales (Cardiff?). Good stuff.
My biggest concern, and I’d be curious to hear what others who are BP, is this:
Fry said that almost everyone he met and spoke with about their illness, if given a chance to push a button and make things go away, would NOT push it. They would choose to remain bipolar. To me, this seems like either a sign of their continued disconnect from reality, an abdication of responsibility, or their financial ability to have other people mop up behind them as they blast through life.
My mania is about to break through now, if it hasn’t already (yes, the MD and therapist know and are talking and I have an appt for this coming Tuesday morning).
Liz, with apologies to you if you feel the same way, I cannot fucking understand how people would NOT “push the button” and make this horrible, demeaning, disabling condition go away if they had the ability to do so.
Thank you for your good work, and get a copy of the Fry two-parter if you can.
A musing: I wonder what percentage of the Old Order Amish population have bipolar disorder as compared with the US population in general? How do the Amish deal with their mentally ill – surely not shun them… it couldn’t be worse than our Skid Rows.
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