The Bipolar Planet has made it to the 21st century. Social Networking is all the rage, and though The Bipolar Planet has provided a private email list for over ten years and a web page for 15 years as of May 2009, I’ve resisted wandering. Ok, here we go… Become a fan at the official Bipolar Planet Facebook page.
The Maudsley Bipolar Disorder Project: the effect of medication, family history, and duration of illness on IQ and memory in bipolar I disorder.
This article presents evidence that psych meds make us sicker.
“Patients on treatment with antipsychotic drugs had a lower current full scale IQ, lower general memory scores, and lower working memory scores. A family history of affective disorders was associated with a higher full scale IQ, but not with either general or working memory measures. Duration of illness was negatively associated with general memory scores, but had no effect on either IQ or working memory measures.”
If you haven’t read Kay Redfield Jamison’s “Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
“I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do. I believe, in short, that we are equally beholden to heart and mind, and that those who have particularly passionate temperaments and questioning minds leave the world a different place for their having been there. It is important to value intellect and discipline, of course, but it is also important to recognize the power of irrationality, enthusiasm and vast energy. Intensity has its costs, of course — in pain, in hastily and poorly reckoned plans, in impetuousness — but it has its advantages as well.”
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, Author and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University
in “The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges”
NPR Morning Edition, June 6, 2005
There is a video of a speech she did about Exhuberance on YouTube that was quite inspiring. She wrote a great book about the love of life called Exuberance: The Passion for Life
.
A few weeks ago there was a vehicle in front of me at the coffeeshop window with a phone number and link to The Evolutionary Brain. I called the number and got the guy in the truck, we waved at each other, and he gave me a DVD of the above video, Dr. Robert Scaer on Brain State Technologies and Trauma.
I had a theory about this 18 years ago when I worked for an EEG company and was getting into brainwave synchronization. Doesn’t it seem obvious that if you can “read” brainwaves, then you can also write them? It would be tricky. We’re not looking for ECT, which is more like an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that wipes the whole thing clean. We just want to defrag the mind.
The main site for the technology, Brain State Technologies™ Brain State Conditioning™.
Imnsho, information like this is an absolute necessity if you don’t want to drown in your own drool. YMMV, of course.
“I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do. I believe, in short, that we are equally beholden to heart and mind, and that those who have particularly passionate temperaments and questioning minds leave the world a different place for their having been there. It is important to value intellect and discipline, of course, but it is also important to recognize the power of irrationality, enthusiasm and vast energy. Intensity has its costs, of course — in pain, in hastily and poorly reckoned plans, in impetuousness — but it has its advantages as well.”
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, Author and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University
in “The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges”
NPR Morning Edition, June 6, 2005
Besides being a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at prestigious Johns Hopkins University and the author of many excellent books, Kay Redfield Jamison has bipolar disorder. Unlike the bipolars today, Dr. Jamison continued her studies and has enjoyed a successful career. I believe that her success is due to her bipolar disorder, not in spite of it. We could all walk away from this with something.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf
The above link is to the full text of the bailout bill, and I suggest that everybody read this bill. It was pushed through with only a couple of days debate by lawyers who have little understanding of the workings of Wall Street or The Fed. And they tacked a lot of pork barrel spending onto it to BRIBE Congress to agree to it. Unfortunately, mental health parity verbiage was tacked onto the bill with the pork. NAMI, of course, is celebrating the bill for its own sake without regard to what effect it will have, or when. Having appeased the mental health lobby, congress is off the hook as far as enacting any further legislation. Way to go!
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf
“To amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health
Service Act, section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code
of 1986 to require equity in the provision of mental
health and substance-related disorder benefits under
group health plans, to prohibit discrimination on the
basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance
and employment, and for other purposes.”
This means that you only get parity if your employer provides your insurance AND that insurance already has mental health coverage. It doesn’t seem to require them to cover it in the first place. It also doesn’t appear to apply to private health insurance.
There is a cost exemption so to limit mental health coverage if it increases costs by some undetermined amount. The insurance companies can still deny claims bases on their definition of “medical necessity” or by their definition of “reasonable and customary” services.
??(2) COST EXEMPTION.?
6 ??(A) IN GENERAL.?With respect to a
7 group health plan (or health insurance coverage
8 offered in connection with such a plan), if the
9 application of this section to such plan (or cov
10 erage) results in an increase for the plan year
11 involved of the actual total costs of coverage
12 with respect to medical and surgical benefits
13 and mental health and substance use disorder
14 benefits under the plan (as determined and cer
15 tified under subparagraph (C)) by an amount
16 that exceeds the applicable percentage described
17 in subparagraph (B) of the actual total plan
18 costs, the provisions of this section shall not
19 apply to such plan (or coverage) during the fol
20 lowing plan year, and such exemption shall
21 apply to the plan (or coverage) for 1 plan year.”
Discrimination on the basis of genetic information only affects illnesses for which genetic tests have been developed. This bill ignores a lot of of the provisions of the ADA, while modifying ERISA quite a bit. I am concerned that this will weaken the ADA by tightening the definitions to exclude non-genetic diseases.
Specific diagnoses this bill applies to will be determined by the GAO, which has 3 years to study it and present a report. Once the beancounters are through will this bill, we’ll have no more than we had the day before the bill passed.
(h) GAO STUDY ON COVERAGE AND EXCLUSION OF
4 MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER DIAG5
NOSES.?
6 (1) IN GENERAL.?The Comptroller General of
7 the United States shall conduct a study that ana8
lyzes the specific rates, patterns, and trends in cov9
erage and exclusion of specific mental health and
10 substance use disorder diagnoses by health plans
11 and health insurance.”
I doubt this will change anything in the near future.
A few years from now you’re going to hear Congressdroids bitching because they didn’t have enough time to collect the facts before enacting this bill.
PSYweb DSM-IV Diagnoses and Codes.
PSYweb has a list of the DSM-IV Diagnosis Codes. Notice that there are a lot of psychiatric diagnoses caused by psych meds. This makes it totally clear that your meds can make you sicker, a good argument for doing the minimum meds to make you functional vs. medicating yourself into oblivion.
The following are a few examples of iatrogenic (physician-caused) psychiatric disorders:
Another cool thing on psyweb is a Mood Disorder Flow Chart that is able to distinguish bipolar disorder from the other mood disorders. A real kick in the head is the question “Symptoms Psychotic in nature, occur at times other then during Manic or Mixed Episodes?”
This seems to imply that bipolars don’t have psychotic depressions, but other mood disorders do. Note that the only the 296 numbers are mood disorders, and only a few of those are called bipolar disorder. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
A couple of years ago I did a decision tree for the bipolar disorders based on the DSM-III. It’s a little different from the DSM-IV-based version.
Psyweb also has a decision tree for differential diagnosis, and that’s a better choice than the mood disorders tree, even for diagnosed bipolars. This tree helps you figure out whether you have another psych diagnosis masquerading as bipolar, something that a 15-minute psych eval will definately miss. That would be truly disastrous, being treated for life for bipolar instead of dealing with something less severe. Have fun!
I think I’m going to invent Seroquel jimmies for ice cream.
Well, we are losing ground. There are a number of groups that are fighting for more humane treatment of mental patients, 
except that by “humane” they mean “treating the poor benighted bastards whether they want it or not.”
Although there are are indeed patients who are unaware of their illnesses, it is unacceptable to treat all of the mentally ill that way. It opens the door to unimaginable abuses. By the way, anognosia is also found in stroke victims with damage to the frontal lobes. And on a more chilling note, some psychiatric treatments induce anosognosia.
NAMI is once again at the forefront in this growing threat.
Anosognosia Keeps Patients From Realizing They’re Ill
A growing body of evidence points to the fact that for many people with serious mental illness, lack of insight is a medically based condition.
About half of the people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may not be getting the treatment they need because of a brain deficit that renders them unable to perceive that they are ill, according to one expert.
Xavier Amador, Ph.D.: “People will come up with illogical and even bizarre explanations for symptoms and life circumstances stemming from their illness.”
Anosognosia, meaning “unawareness of illness,” is a syndrome commonly seen in people with serious mental illness and some neurological disorders, according to Xavier Amador, Ph.D., who spoke at the 2001 convention of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Washington, D.C., in July.
People with this syndrome do not believe they are ill despite evidence to the contrary, said Amador, who is director of psychology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Treatment Advocacy Center
“The Treatment Advocacy Center has been the catalyst for many positive changes in our laws and a shift in our perception of the importance of intervention. Their unique advocacy is restoring the important balance between individual freedom and caring coercion.”
Legislation
These issues of “involuntary commitment” and “assisted outpatient treatment,” are labeled in academia as “controversial”, a concept interpreted by many as too difficult for the average person to understand. Without the support of scientific research, we all felt until now, intimidated and afraid to be rendered guilty of tampering with everyone’s civil rights. To continue protecting their civil rights only allows our loved ones to remain psychotic, addicted to substances, wandering the streets of the USA, wasting their lives in jails and using, over and over again, most of the economic resources available to treat ALL mentally ill persons. We cannot forget that, not too long ago, freeing the slaves and fighting for an end to discrimination were also considered “controversial” subjects.
Bill mandates treatment for mentally ill (phillyBurbs.com)
Others, though, contend there is little evidence the court orders are effective, and the laws deflect attention from deeper problems plaguing the mental health system, such as a lack of funding for expanded treatment and support services.
Patient advocates fear that law could be abused by applying it whenever a patient disagrees with a doctor’s recommendations. A 2005 state law allows for psychiatric advanced directives specifying treatment preferences when a person’s decision-making is impaired, patient advocates added.
“I believe that the bill has grown out of a sincere desire to help people with mental illness,” said Joseph Rogers, president of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, if it became law, it would have the exact opposite effect.”
Be afraid. Be VERY Afraid. If you disagree with your caregivers, they can pull out the anosognosia label to get you out of the way.
Get out one of the books you are reading – the first one that comes to hand is ok. Find chapter 8, the 8th paragraph or section and the 8th sentence or first sentence in the 8th paragraph. If you can’t figure out what I mean, do something that has a bunch of 8s in it.
Mine:
“They observed a significant peak in depression for women in November, with a secondary peak in April, and a peak for men in admissions for both depression and mania in April.”
– Manic-Depressive Illness Second Edition, Goodwin & Jamison.
Chapter 8
Section 8
first sentence in Paragraph 8
Boring, huh? I’ll try another book later. Or another combination of 8′s from this one.
What’s yours?
I found this in my drafts folder. I have no idea where I was going with it or who I was answering.
I hear that they are studying drug-induced coma as a treatment for mania. Granted, sleep is a good prophylactic for bipolar. It’s just too, too creepy. The end game will be to stack comatose mentally ill off in a warehouse somewhere. Didn’t Robin Cook
write a chilling medical fiction about something like this?
How much sleep does it take? Are they researching conversion tables to translate hours of coma to days of sleep?
There’s a good section on sleep and bipolar in Dr. Fieve’s latest book, Bipolar II
There was also a chapter in the first edition of Goodwin and Jamison. Incidentally, Manic-Depressive Illness Second Edition
It’s rather disheartening to hear that the researchers are repeating the same old studies over and over instead of exploring new treatment options that would enable us to go back to work instead of turning us into mental cripples by reducing our IQs and impairing our short-term memory. And then stigmatizing us for having cognitive deficits.
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