My Story The Real Truth On Surviving Manic Depression

Surviving Manic Depression is the most authoritative book on this disorder, which affects more than two million people in the U.S. alone. Based on the latest research, it provides detailed coverage of every aspect of manic depression-from understanding its causes and treatments to choosing doctors and managing relapses-with guidance drawn from the latest scientific information. Drs. Torrey and Knable provide thorough, up-to-date coverage of all aspects of the disease, including a detailed description of symptoms (with many direct descriptions from patients themselves), risk factors, onset and cause, medications (including drugs still in the testing stage), psychotherapy, and rehabilitation, as well as information about how the disease affects children and adolescents. Here too are discussions of special problems related to manic depression, including alcohol and drug abuse, violent behavior, medication noncompliance, suicide, sex, AIDS, and confidentiality. Surviving Manic Depression also includes special features such as a listing of selected websites, books, videotapes, and other resources.

I lived through the darkest episodes of manic depression. My story is true and very detailed about my episodes. Some of what you read will probably make you laugh, and other parts are dark but need to be told. Maybe you know someone who is bipolar or you yourself suffer from this illness. I believe my honest story will help you understand what it is to be bipolar. It has taken me ten years to build the courage to put my story out there. If it helps even one person, I will know it was worth it.

Description This book includes a true story about reaching the very edge, the very depths and heights of bipolar illness, but almost always with a sense of humour. Much like a car crash, people cannot help but look when they spy on these sort of black events. It is a new perspective on manic depression as in Prof K.R. Jamison's autobiography about her illness in An Unquiet Mind, but mixed explosively with S. Kaysen's immersion into madness in Girl, Interrupted; except this book feels like it's been written whilst on crack-cocaine and directed by Quentin Tarantino on a blood-thirsty day. This book may be dark but its underlying message is one of hope. Sometimes you have to see the depths of Hades before you can really appreciate life and health. Being a manic depressive from just 5, then adding in anorexia, bulimia, self-harm and hundreds of suicide attempts, "typical" student substance misuse on the heavy end of "normal," culminating in a long hospitalisation when I was an Oxford doctoral student in clinical medicine. I ended up totally "mad," in a long-term psychotic mixed episode (being both manic and depressed concurrently, and suffering from delusions and hallucinations) and several actual deaths that I was revived from. This is my autobiographical tale, a girl who came from nowhere "up North" to study medicine at Oxford University and spent the majority of her life quite literally mad, but never stopped laughing about it. This suits a wide audience for personal and professional reasons. I want to reach sufferers, carers, and professionals. I am proof that anything can be overcome, what should not be survived can be, and that nothing is more important in these diseases than hope. About the Author Katy Sara Culling was born in Liverpool, North England, in 1975. Daughter of Sue and Paul Culling, her family moved back to its roots in Derbyshire, where she grew up along with her younger sister Beth, in the village of Castle Donington, on the Derbyshire-Leicestershire border. However, even as young as 5 she exhibited symptoms of bipolar disorder. She attended a private school for girls, Loughborough High School, where she was a high achieving student. Unfortunately, due to bullying and also to numb her mania and depression, she developed anorexia nervosa and began to self-harm. Katy Sara then went to The University of Nottingham, where she studied Biochemistry and Nutrition. She did her (1st class) thesis on alcohol and metabolism, interested in the psychology of Alcoholism. All this was done despite considerable illness including over 60 suicide attempts and purging-type anorexia - and yet more bullying. Her good work at Nottingham lead to an offer of a place at The University of Oxford, where she studied for a PhD (DPhil) in Clinical Medicine. In her final year she became so ill with bipolar disorder that she was in hospital (first as a day patient, then an inpatient, and eventually a sectioned inpatient). During that year and a half she attempted suicide over 300 times, dying twice, only to be revived. She finally, at the age of 28 got a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and the correct medication, and has been mostly fine ever since. She later wrote up her PhD thesis and published her results.

What is it like to be at the mercy of biochemical agents in your brain that make you think you are working in league with secret agents? In Agents in My Brain, Bill Hannon guides you into a world in which crossword puzzles are coded messages from the CIA and a scrap of masking tape on your car windshield means that your conversations are being monitored. Never before has anyone described the bizarre though processes of a manic-depressive so clearly. Hannon shares glimpses of his life as a happy, well-adjusted high school student with many friends, a member of the high school swim team, then as a young man going off to college and wondering what he should tell his roommates and potential girlfriends about the unpredictable behavior brought on by his illness. In this authentic, gutsy, sometimes humorous, first-person account of surviving manic depression, one that hasn't been prettified or romaticized, Hannon tells what is ultimately a success story. He describes how he eventually finds a competent doctor who prescribes medications that help prevent mania and depression with minimal side-effects.

My title, The Inner Truth, expresses the significance of my core existence that allowed me to find myself again out of the filth that surrounded me. Others treated me as an object to be used and tossed on the trash heap, but I have held onto the beauty that exists in me to pull myself from the darkness that has been my life to be able to tell my story to benefit others.

Some children inherit "the family nose." Autumn Stringam and her brother Joseph inherited the family bipolar disorder, a severe mental illness that led to their mother's and grandfather's suicides. Autumn, at 22, was psychotic and in a psychiatric hospital on suicide watch; Joseph, at 15, was prone to violent episodes so terrifying the family feared for their lives. But after they began taking a nutritional supplement developed by their father and based, incredibly, on a formula given to aggressive hogs--Autumn's and Joseph's symptoms disappeared. Today they both lead normal, productive lives. A Promise of Hope is the personal story of Autumn Stringam's flight from madness to wellness, all due to the vitamin and mineral supplement that works on the premise that some forms of mental illness are caused by nutritional deficiencies. An honest book that exposes the hidden torment of bipolar disorder, it is the story of a daughter seeking to forgive her mother. A Promise of Hope is also an astonishing scientific account that moves from a kitchen table in Alberta to the treatment offices of a distinguished Harvard pshyciatrist and into the labs of a skeptical medial establishment. It climaxes in a bitter--but eventually triumphant--battle with Health Canada, in which the tiny supplement company is exonerated and praised for saving the lives of thousands of Canadians previously thought lost to mental illness. More than anything, A Promise of Hope is a powerful story and a call for a new understanding of the causes of mental illness and its treatments. 20% of Canadians will experience mental illness in their lifetimes Over 300,000 Canadians are affected by bipolar disorder (or manic depression) 15% of people with biploar disorder commit suicide EMPower Plus, the supplement that worked for Autumn, is being used and studied around the world, reflecting the growing awareness of the role of micronutrients in normal brain function