This morning one of the clients we have worked with for several years came in with his wife. It was a surprise that she joined the weekly session. They had just returned from a vacation in Mexico. And neither of them had had any fun on the trip. When he left for Mexico, he was very mildly hypomanic and, I suspect, stayed that …
Fatigue and Depression or Bipolar
Fatigue is a common symptom in people with recurrent depression or bipolar. And in fact a common symptom in the general population. It is estimated that up to 10% of otherwise healthy people suffer from fatigue. And it is a more common symptom in women than in men. Sometimes fatigue may persist well beyond other symptoms of depression. First, it …
Blowing Things Up: Self-Destructive Responses to Frustration
Why do we sometimes come up with self-destructive responses to the unpleasant feeling of being trapped or the anxiety of an unhappy life situation? I talked about this a little bit in an earlier post that was based on an article in the New York Times. In that article, it was noted that many people may find it so hard to deal with the stress …
Bipolar Benefits: More Social and Verbal Abilities?
Why does bipolar disorder persist at a constant level across generations and around the world if it can be associated with depression, psychosis, despair and even suicide? Are there bipolar benefits associated with the same genes that can lead to the disorder? In August 2014, in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a very careful and detailed research study identified a …
In Memoriam of My Favorite Neighbor – Arnrow
“That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?” – Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society Having grown up in San Francisco in the 90s, I was always proud of …
Bipolar Disorder and Leadership Potential
Is bipolar disorder associated with greater leadership potential? A Swedish study suggests that people with bipolar have both the highest and lowest rates of leadership potential. What does this mean? Many anecdotes and a few studies have suggested that people in leadership positions have higher rates of bipolar disorder than might be expected by chance. Think of the book The Hypomanic Edge by John Gartner, …
Mood Charting Part 1
“My medications work for a while and then they just stop working…” “I have tried everything and nothing works…” “I have been in treatment forever but I just never seem to get better…” In our experience these very common concerns are often symptoms of an everyday problem in psychiatric treatment of mood disorders: it is very hard in a traditional …
Friends and Family Don’t Understand – Bipolar Communication Problems
Sometimes those without the challenges of bipolar neurochemistry simply “don’t get it” – how moods can shift abruptly and dramatically, and often without warning, or with subtle hints of the mood shift about to confront you – and at what might be the slightest trigger a sudden onslaught of overwhelming sensations due to hypersensitivity to stimuli, someone chewing can sound thunderous; a repetitive noise, such …
Starting Bipolar Treatment – Dr Suzanne A . Black and Mr. Stuart Jessiman
Through the Door : The Initial Consultation – Part I I arrive at the door of an address of an English speaking psychologist in Paris given to me by my wife – This is someone I don t want to see.; but, my increasingly erratic, increasingly violent behavior is threatening my marriage , job and basic sense of well-being . …
Bipolar Disorders and Exercise: Working Out Can Tone Up Your Neurotransmitters – Arnrow
Neurotransmitters are the chemicals that your brain cells (neurons) use to transmit information, without them we cannot think or act. It is no wonder that too much or too little of any one particular neurotransmitter can have substantial effects on how our body and brain functions. For example, people with mood disorders tend to have low levels of the four major …
How Mood Can Influence Events
What I do for a living often involves asking dumb questions. For example, we all know our moods are usually affected by events. In fact, if we happen to notice we’re in a bad mood, the first thing we start to do, often unconsciously, is try to figure out what caused that bad mood. It’s not that it’s a bad …
Mood Disorders and Summer Nutrition – Arnrow
We recently wrote about healthy eating for people with mood disorders (original post can be viewed here). Today, we bring you some delicious and easy ideas to enjoy in this summer weather—well rather, July in San Francisco that so happens to be co-occurring with the hot and sunny climate in other places. Infused water Drinking infused water is a great and …
Skill Building for Psychosis
One of the very hard things about many psychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, is that they often begin at a time that is critical to the development of many skills and abilities needed for successful adult life. Many years ago we visited a wonderful program in Atlanta developed for young people with schizophrenia called STARS. The program was …
Does Psychiatric Treatment Work?
How well do psychiatric treatments work? Aren’t psychiatric medications just placebos? Does psychotherapy really do anything? These are the kind of questions that mental health clinicians run into all the time. Dr. Maximilian Huhn and colleagues from the Munich Technical Institute (Huhn – reference 1) have conducted a major review of the data. They evaluated results from 852 clinical trials involving …
Hypomania and Sensory Experience
More than a decade ago, Dr. Suzanne Black, who occasionally writes posts on this blog, got me interested in the sensory experiences associated with hypomania.In our Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the only reference to these is under the heading of “distractibility.” And, indeed, sometimes people who are experiencing intense and profound sensory experiences everywhere they look and listen, may have trouble …
App that Predicts Mania
There are smartphone apps for monitoring your diet, your drugs, even your heart. And now a Michigan psychiatrist, Melvin McInnis, is developing an app he hopes doctors will someday use to predict when a manic episode is imminent in patients with bipolar disorder. Manic episodes can come with a dangerous mix of increased energy and impaired judgment. “We want to be able to …
Soul Training – Lyndsey
One difficult aspect of living with bipolar disorder, especially when it is new, is that our ever changing moods make it difficult to keep up a regular and normal social life. After all, If you can’t get out of bed for 3 weeks on account of acute depression, it’s pretty hard to make new or keep existing commitments. In my …
Stress and Trauma as Risk Factors for Bipolar
I have long been interested in the relationship between traumatic experiences and bipolar disorder. A couple of years ago I gave a presentation at the University of California, San Francisco, Bipolar Disorder Clinic on the topic. I got interested in the issue because I noticed how many of the women in my clinic with bipolar disorder also had childhood PTSD. …
Children of Bipolar Parents – Risk of Having a Mood Disorder
One of the most common questions I am asked is, what are the odds, if I am bipolar, of my children having bipolar. Recently we ran across a research study that tries to answer this question. The Pittsburgh Bipolar Offspring study, directed by Boris Birmaher of the University of Pittsburgh, looked at the odds of developing psychiatric disorders in children of parents …
Specialized Treatment for Bipolar is More Effective
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. A recent article from the excellent Bipolar News Network, summarizes a study that showed that specialized treatment for bipolar was more effective than usual care and actually saved money (the cost savings from avoiding hospitalization more than paid for greater outpatient treatment costs). Patients who had been hospitalized for a first episode of mania were …