Tag: diagnosis
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Memory, subjectivity and bipolar research
George Mikes was a Hungarian-born journalist and humorist. Most well-known for his 1946 book “How to be an alien”. This is a comic commentary on the English and their relationship with foreigners. Sometime in the 1980s, I remember a piece he wrote for a Sunday newspaper in which he said (I paraphrase) “I had a…
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Nature, nurture, nonsense
It took more than a decade of drafting my bipolar memoir, attending life-writing classes and residentials then other events where I listened attentively to authors, publishers and literary agents as they shared their secrets of how to get published before I gave up. I switched allegiance, joined Twitter and set about promoting my stories in…
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Does everyone go through bipolar denial?
My first acute episode of mental illness was psychotic depression. Looking back on it the whole thing was very scary compared to later instances: On discharge my sick note read “Mental illness”, nothing more specific. They hoped this was a one-off. I went back to work, continuing to attend as an outpatient for a year…
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“Is being mentally ill normal?”
This is one of those auto suggested queries from Google when you start typing, so I guess quite a few people ask it. I have had five hospital admissions, including the last one, ten years ago, under the Mental Health Act, as a compulsory patient. In one earlier case, although I was very unwell and…