Bipolar disorder
MANY FORMS OF MENTAL ILLNESS
The many manifestations of mental health problems like: neurotic, personality, psychotic and non-psychotic mental disorders are now one of the leading causes of death globally.(1) One statistic sites mental health disorders as the second largest killer after heart disease by 2020. Like Melissa Raven(2) I question these statements. Still, there is little doubt that mental disorders account for a significant percentage of the non-fatal burden of disease. As the tempestuous rage of modern society continues decade after decade in a multitude of forms, mental illness in a global perspective has, arguably, become more common than cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Mental disorders can now be diagnosed reliably and accurately as can the most common physical disorders; some can be prevented, all can be managed and treated with varying degrees of success if people are willing to seek out the relevant specialists and, it must be added, if the country in question, has in place some organized program of health care. With 200 countries in the world and some 7.5 billion people this is often not the case.
A COMPLEX SUBJECT
In saying these things and making the above points, I do not doubt for a moment how complex this subject is and how many millions of people with mental health issues are not being either diagnosed or treated. For this reason, among others, I have posted part or all of what I call my 'chaos-narrative' at a number of internet sites. Below readers will find the beginning of my personal story and experience of bipolar disorder(BPD), and all of it if they click on the links. This story is a special focus on the idiosyncratic manifestations of BPD in my life, my life-narrative, my experience with this and other mental health issues.
Severe mental tests are everywhere apparent, not only in the field of psychiatry and clinical psychology whose role is to deal with these afflictions, but also across the wider culture in which we all live. These tests have been afflicting people across most cultures in the long history of humankind, but especially in the last century as the world’s population has gone from 1.5 billion in 1914 to 7.5 billion in 2014 and especially since the onset of the Great War: 1914-1918. The tempests of our modern world have continued decade after decade and they show no signs of abating. The accompanying tests and trials will continue to blow in the decades ahead, apparently with increasing force, as our planet goes through its several climacterics. According to the World Health Organization, 1 in every 4 people, or 25% per cent of individuals, develop one or more mental disorders at some stage in their life. Today, 450 million people globally suffer from mental disorders in developed and developing countries. Of these, 154 million suffer from depression, 25 million from schizophrenia, 91 million from alcohol-use disorder and 15 million drug-use disorder. These statistics are a world unto themselves and readers with an interest in this subject can fine-tune their knowledge of the numbers in these several categories in addition to the many other categories of mental disorder by going to the following links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mental_disorders_as_defined_by_the_Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorder
RESOURCES AVAILABLE
There are now available a burgeoning range of resources in today’s print and electronic media to help people understand this complex field of mental health. My life-narrative, a narrative I have called my chaos narrative, is one which I hope will be of help to those who suffer from BPD, from other mental health disorders or, indeed, from traumas of many kinds. My account is but one small resource for readers and I have posted sections of this account at internet sites which contain a dialogue between people interested in particular mental health issues about which I have had some experience in my life. My email address is: ronprice9@gmail.com. Any reader who would like to write to me personally in relation to any personal issues raised here feel free to do so. This post and my writing on mental health issues is also part of my own effort, my own contribution to the destigmatization of mental illness.
----------------------------------------FOOTNOTES--------------------------
(1) This statistic, this statement, is a very complex one. Suicide is a leading cause of death among teenagers and adults under 35. There are an estimated 10 to 20 million non-fatal attempted suicides every year worldwide. Mental disorders are frequently present at the time of suicide with estimates from 87% to 98%. (See: G. Arsenault-Lapierre, C.Kim, G. Tureck, "Psychiatric diagnoses in 3275 suicides: a meta-analysis," BMC, Psychiatry No. 4, p. 37, Nov. 2004)-See "Suicide," Wikipedia.
(2) Melissa Raven, 'Beware of “killer statistics” in the mental health field,' The Crikey Health Blog, March 18, 2011. Melissa Raven is a psychiatric epidemiologist and policy analyst, Adjunct Lecturer, Discipline of Public Health, Flinders University and a member of Healthy Skepticism.
MENTAL HEALTH AND LANGUAGE
The following blog at the Healthy Place internet site deals with the problem of language with respect to mental health issues. The writer at this blog likes the word 'crazy' to describe her life with BPD. She uses the word in her daily life with others. But the word, 'crazy' like the terms 'mentally ill' or even 'mental health' problems/issues, have their downside. In some ways, the problem raised for the entire subject is one of language. There is a world of language associated with attempts to describe not only the physiology, the biology, the medical side of BPD in addition to one's experience with BPD over the short term or over a lifetime. A large part of the problem is the use of complex language. The field of mental health is replete with complex terminology. It is helpful for those with various types of mental health problems to become as familiar as they can with this language. I try for the most part to use simple language—but I do not always achieve this aim.
Language is a problem not only with respect to mental illness, but also with respect to many other complex issues and subjects in society. KISS, keep-it-simple-stupid, an acronym I used for many years as a teacher of English, does not solve all the problems with writing and language, as well as with communicating to others about complex subjects. Whom the gods would destroy they first make simple and then simpler and then simplest, to alter slightly an aphorism by Anonymous, an ancient proverb wrongly attributed to Euripides. I will leave this problem/spectrum of complexity and simplicity here and will return to it another time. This problem of language will not be going away at this website or in the lives of the billions of the world's peoples.
Readers can go to the following three links below to follow-up on these introductory paragraphs:
http://www.cinematherapy.com/birgitarticles/Mr.-Jones.html
http://www.medhelp.org/user_journals/list
http://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/breakingbipolar
MY STORY MY CHAOS NARRATIVE
A Personal-Clinical Study of A Chaos Narrative, by Ron Price
Some of my internet posts below on the subject of bipolar disorder: mine and others:
http://www.depressionforums.org/forums/topic/66962-amy-winehouse-rip/
http://www.mentalhealthforum.net/forum/showthread-Bipolar-Disorder-and-PTSD
http://www.bluepeople.com/members/ronprice.html
http://www.medhelp.org/user_journals/show/73586/My-BPD-Story-Instalment-1
FAMOUS PEOPLE WITH BPD AND THEIR FAMILIES
Virginia Woolf(1882-1941) was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories. She is regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. In recent years she has acquired a totally new place in literature. Her fame has always rested on her novels and partly on her essays, which, though they resemble the feathers in a boa beside the achievements of modern literary criticism, can still delight those who have an ear and an eye as well as a mind. She has always been a phenomenon, an event which anyone who regards the novel as a great art form cannot ignore whether or not he dismisses her claim to be as important as she desperately hoped to be. For more on this subject go to: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1978/apr/20/virginia-woolf-fever/?pagination=false
It is natural, and no doubt correct, to suppose that Leonard Woolf, her husband, has been thought to deserve an elaborate and large-scale biography because he married Virginia Stephen. But one needs to be careful how one phrases that remark. For the infinitely poignant story of Virginia Woolf’s life and death would certainly have been different if there had been no Leonard Woolf; his behavior in the marriage was remarkable and is the most impressive thing about him. For more on this subject, on this biography of Leonard Woolf go to:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/dec/21/the-love-of-a-pessimist/
MENTAL ILLNESS: PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN
Over a lifetime of traveling and settling for varying lengths of time in cities, towns and in places of work as well as being a part of different communities, I have run across a number of Baha’is who suffered from a history of mental illness in one form or another. I have met them beginning as far back as the spring of 1963 when I was suffering from hypomania, a mild form of mania, and a not-so-mild depression in the fall of that same year. I continued to meet them in the various towns I travelled through and lived and taught in as a pioneer in both Canada and Australia. I met many more in the 1980s and 1990s in Perth, refugees from Iran and by then Australians whom I got to know in the Baha'i communities I was a part of in Perth Western Australia. Just this last weekend, an Australian here in Tasmania, told me of his long history of mental illness. I have also met many people who were not Baha'is who suffered from a range of disorders in the mental health domain. When one suffers oneself others are more inclined to open-up. But this is not always the case, many people I know hesitate to form a relationship with me due to my mental illness.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Five Epochs, 2011
Dr. V. Payman, a Melbourne psychiatrist and also a Baha'i, told me about the negative affects on mental health of the Iranian refugee experience. This Iranian diaspora, throughout the twentieth century, but increasing dramatically after the revolution in Iran in 1979, resulted from the persecution of Baha'is in that country. It is a persecution that is now nearly two centuries old. Many of Dr. Payman's clients were first and second generation Baha'is in Australia who had come from Iran to escape the many forms of prejudice, ill-treatment and social venom. In addition to the Baha'is I have known there have been a host of others on the internet at dozens of sites with whom I entered into discussions on the subject of mental health in the last decade.
The world of mental illness
was transformed in those
four decades, but still there
were the sufferers whom I
met from place to place with:
their acute senitivities, their
talents and abilities, their
capacity to talk & especially
understand life’s complexities.
A writer, a pianist, a holder
of sixty part-time jobs in his
life. Good-grief Charlie Brown,
could some of them talk & talk,
all on the periphery but still
accepted in the centre when
they could handle the music.(1)
The Cause attracted all kinds
of the mentally ill, a loosely
defined group, who were found
far-&-wide in our global society,
and they began to proliferate
the commentariat and often in
disguise: no one new nor did
they themselves that below the
surface were unsolved problems
that were just too complex to
deal with as society's tempest
blew-blew to the furthest parts
of the planet harrowing-up the
souls of billions and millions!!
Ron Price
1 February 2000 to 3 December 2011
(1) The terms ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ are used in the social sciences for several purposes. They were once apt terms to describe those who were active and those who were inactive in the Baha’i community. In the new Baha'i paradigm, 1996 to 2011, the terms/labels active and inactive, deepened/veteran and undeepened/novice, meeting-goers and non-meeting goers, inter alia, were gradually falling into disuse. The international Baha'i community was recognizing formally what it had already recognized informally for decades; namely, that the Baha'i community was a heterogenous mix for the most diverse types, some of whom had become members of this global enterprize and some of whom associated with Baha'is since they shared common interests and/or developed friendships with Baha'is. The Baha'is have been attempting to create community, especially in the last two decades, a unity in diversity, and it was no easy task.
WHO KNOWS YOU?
I once read a comment by the American educator John Bradshaw saying something along the lines of "no one else can ever really know us." John Elliot Bradshaw (1933-) is an American educator, counselor, motivational speaker and author who has hosted a number of PBS(public broadcasting programs) examinations on topics such as: addiction, recovery, codependency and spirituality. Bradshaw is active in the self-help movement, and is credited with popularizing such ideas as the "wounded inner child.” His books are mainly works of popular psychology. In his promotional materials and in interviews and reviews of his work he is often referred to as a theologian.
"I swear by Him Who hath caused Me to reveal whatever hath pleased Him! Ye are better known to the inmates of the Kingdom on high than ye are known to your own selves. Think ye these words to be vain and empty? Would that ye had the power to perceive the things your Lord the
All-Merciful doth see, things that attest the excellence of your rank, that bear witness to the greatness of your worth, that proclaim
the sublimity of your station!"(1)
The inmates of the Kingdom love you. To me that is more tangible than
saying that "God" loves me. God is an abstract. The inmates of heaven
are real people, who lived, struggled and died, and know how hard life
can be. They watch over us. They perceive the difference between us
and our illnesses better than any living human can.
As for normal humans, they are, well....human. It is human to want to
protect oneself from the damage that others might inflict upon us. That
you are currently in a good space is wonderful. You know it. God knows
it. You can tell the world that you are not going to be abusive or hurtful
demanding or critical, but it is difficult for people who are NOT you to
trust that because you are not perfect and both flesh and spirit ere.
Love is not an on/off switch. It is not either there or not there.
Love is an attraction to the attributes of God reflected in the world
of creation-in the world of the human soul. People can be attracted
to 50 of your wonderful qualities and long to bask in their spiritual
radiance, but at the same time be afraid to subject themselves to the
one, or the five or the fifty destructive qualities that have hurt them
in the past. Understanding and acknowledging this dilemma, rather
than being hurt or disappointed by it, might help create the space you
and your family need to take tentative steps towards each other again.
Let them know that having contact with you does not mean that they
have to forgive everything you've done, or that they are committing
to stay in your life if you start exhibiting destructive behaviors again.
Offer a trial relationship, put yourself on probation, go 1-day-at-a-time
and see if people are more open to contact with you.(2)
(1) Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 316
(2) Justice St. Rain, "Baha’i Mental Health Yahoo Group," 3 June 2010.
A test as an opportunity to take responsibility
for my own life. Instead of asking God to solve
my difficulty, I ask God to show me the tools of
character I need to solve it myself....God is still
solving the problem, because it is the attributes
of God within me that are creating the solution,
but instead of being a passive recipient of God’s
grace, I am an active participant in the solution.
Let go of guilt, shame, fear and depression. They
do absolutely no good. Don’t just pray for God to
solve your problems. Pray that God shows you how
to be an active worker and participant in the solution
to your problems!!**##
OUT OF THE CLOSET
Pierre Trudeau was the Prime Minister of Canada when I travelled as a pioneer to Australia in 1971 for the Canadian Baha’i community. By July 1971 I was teaching primary school in South Australia. In March 1971, three months before I left Canada, Trudeau married Margaret Sinclair, a beautiful 18 year old flower child of the counter-culture from the sixties. She was 30 years younger than he. Four years ago, in 2006, Margaret Trudeau went public about her lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder(BPD). This year, in 2010, her story of that battle is in a book entitled: Changing My Mind1. –Ron Price with thanks to (1) Andrew Cohen, “What A long, strange trip it’s been,” The Globe and Mail, 22 October 2010.
Thanks, Margaret, for the story
of your tortuous journey, your
account of the extreme moods,
emotions which silently shaped
your life right back to childhood
in this your third memoir….BPD
made for an inconstancy in your
decades of living….that medical
affliction slowly getting socially
destigmatized at last..I started to
go public about the same time as
you did, Margaret, on the WWW
and you can find me at more than
100 internet sites which deal with
depression, affective disorders, &
BPD in mental health’s vast world.
Celebrities, like you, who go public
help folks like me…...the ordinarily
ordinary man who has also battled
through emotional turmoil’s road!!
Ron Price
25 November 2010
