Bipolar Disorder: More Than the Ups and Downs of Life

Some of the Bipolar disorder symptoms includes loss of energy, excessive negative self-talk, feeling of worthlessness, confusion and inability to concentrate, difficulty in making decisions, loss of appetite, persistent thoughts of death or dying or suicidal thoughts, etc.

I have bipolar, currently treated. This all sounds accurate.

Ah yes... Bi - polar, another way of excusing lack of self control. Seems like there are a lot of "medical" reasons out there that allow one to escape the consequences of bad or idiotic behavior. I'd like to see more acceptance of responsibility and less of the blame game.

horrid to have to live with x just wish people could understand me =[

i think id rather just go through life not knowing than being diagnosed as mentally ill. i think that would put an even bigger strain on an already unstable psyche

About your article “Bipolar Disorder: More Than the Ups and Downs of Life”
You are going to school for journalism and take a special interest in health and science. May I suggest a few changes that will make your paper sound more professional?

Pg. 1, Para 6; When you state, "The sad thing is that..."
Perhaps you can change it to, "Statistics show..."

Pg. 2 Para 2; Instead of using the word think, maybe try believe.

Pg. 2 Para 2; Perhaps you can spell out ASAP instead of abbreviating it.

Hope I helped.
- Angel

Of course a person should try to improve how they deal with the world. I think those suggestions are all useful and appropriate suggestions. Just based on my experience though I think finding a good psychiatrist who has insight into the disorder can be useful. As an example although I am not one 20 % of those afflicted find complete relief via the drug Lithium. It does require blood monitoring. It is not talked about much because it is cheap and generic, so no ads for this.

If you have this kind of problem in your life honestly you shouldn't need a magazine article or an advertisement to tell you what it is, just a friend at most, if you haven't noticed yourself. After realizing you have such a problem, it obviously should be treated, sure. But by drugs, necessarily? It's not like your body has some chemical imbalance resulting from an at all scientifically understood physical disability. That the imbalance is even "unnatural" in the sense that it's the result of an improperly functioning body or brain, is purely theory, and is only held by Some doctors anyway...... Others believe that any changes in your chemistry that may be observed are a regular accompaniment to changes in your emotions, which in turn are the regular result of your exposure to life experience. Different people learn different ways of looking at the world and, with that, different ways of responding emotionally. As with anything learned, misunderstandings can occur. Instead of subjecting yourself to drug-induced zombification that your likely corporate-owned doctor sees fit to diagnose you, believing that at least that way you can Control your disfunctionallity, even if you have to live with it and pay money for it for the rest of your life; there is another option...... You can consult a professional psycho-analyst to help you figure out where in your outlook you may have been going wrong, with inapproriate emotions resulting. If you believe in anger-management, if you believe in trauma recovery assistance, if you believe that sometimes people develope destructive patterns in their ways of thinking without realizing it and could use some help sorting through that, there's no reason why bi-polar disorder, especially mild cases, can't be explained and dealt with in the same way. Actually Dealing with your problems instead of burying them with a drug psychosis is hard work. But it might be worth it.