By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
picture copyright & courtesy of Christina Tsevis (crosti)
Bipolar disorder is a serious mental disorder that disrupts the emotional and social lives of people who suffer from it.
Patients with bipolar disorder experience intense periods of mania, where they tend to feel over optimistic or even grandiose, and often become overly social or even inappropriate in their contact with other people. This is something they usually regret and feel ashamed of later, but they have little control over their behavior when they are manic. They also tend to experience periods of depression, where they become withdrawn and isolate themselves. When they do not experience a mood episode, they tend to be fairly well and very likable and cherish the friendship of others, but the effects of their previous episodes persist. The mood episodes disrupt their social lives, and as a result they are often isolated. The lack of a supportive network of friends makes their lives even more difficult to bear, increases their risk to become unwell again, and delays their recovery.
Our BipolarLab eBuddy program aims to develop a network of BipolarLab eBuddies who will volunteer their time to befriend at least one bipolar patient who will be undergoing supervised treatment by a BipolarLab professional.
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By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
We wish you a very merry and cheery Christmas and a Happy New Year with a moodeat turkey recipe specially prepared for you to help you cope with the Christmas Blues.
We know it takes a lot more than a moodeat turkey, but every little thing you do helps!
Remember to prepare it with a group of supportive friends and loving family members.
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By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
Setting up and running an evidence based clinical e-practice in the field of mental health is an exhilarating challenge!
In other fields of medicine, this may not be the case, but in the mental health world, evidence based practice is a relatively new development.
“Evidence-based practice” means we conduct our clinical practice based on evidence that we’ve acquired from clinical research. Similar to drug research, your doctor will usually prescribe medications that’ve been tested thoroughly through many trials, and have been proven to benefit your health condition. Once upon a time, your therapy could’ve been based on Dr. Ego’s clinical expertise, big name or great insights, but thankfully these days such practices are slowly becoming a nightmare of the past (although, drug companies still invest on armies of Dr. Egos “aka opinion leaders” to influence your local doctor’s prescription practices).
However, evidence-based practice is a fairly recent development in the field of mental health, and especially in the field of psychotherapy. The rise of behavioral therapy in the 60s, partly as a reaction to the psychoanalytic status quo, and later its marriage with cognitive therapy, have given us a remarkable new tradition of true evidence-based psychotherapeutic practice.
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By Dr Eirini Manthou, BSc., MSc., PhD
One thing that determines our enjoyment in life is mood. Mood changes from day to day, moment to moment. We may be happy, energized, have optimistic feelings, take part in enjoyable activities, feel loving; but we may also feel unpleasant, moody, irritable, anxious, tired and even depressed. We’ve all come across these feelings and have experienced the enormous impact they have on our psychological and physical wellbeing. However, as people tend to favor positivity and happiness, we try to regulate our bad moods by engaging in certain activities and routines such as eating, exercising, smoking, drinking, socializing, playing games, watching TV, etc.
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By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
I recently attended one of the lovely webinars hosted by the International Bipolar Foundation. The speaker, Dr Nassir Ghaemi (Professor at Tufts university), presented his book, a “First Rate Madness: Mood disorders and Crisis Leadership” and discussed the issue of leadership and mood disorders.
According to his talk, people with mood disorders, as well as in general mentally abnormal people, make better leaders — especially at times of crisis. He gave examples of many American and European political leaders who achieved “greatness,” and their psychohistory suggests also had a mental disorder – in most cases a bipolar disorder.
I have trouble digesting this argument; not for personal reasons, I also love my bipolar patients and wish to think and speak well of them, but for scientific reasons.
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By Valerie Kilaberia, BSc., MSc. BipolarLab Junior Psychologist
Even though the majority of research highlights the negative aspects of bipolar disorder, it is not uncommon to listen to patients who talk warmly about their experiences.
A new study conducted by Lobban, Taylor, Murray & Jones (2012) at the University of Lancaster, UK investigated the positive experiences of people who suffer from bipolar disorder.
The participants reported that they experience many positive feelings, including intensified abilities, such as higher academic abilities; acute senses, perceptual sensitivity, focus and clarity of thought. They also reported feeling more creative and productive.
The research indicated that a sub-group of people with bipolar disorder prefers to be with the condition as they experience invaluable feelings. Some of the participants work or worked in high professional positions and provided information concerning the times when it was incredibly easy for them to work hard. They felt that they could achieve high levels of productivity and were very ambitious.
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By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
Being critical of yourself or being on the receiving end of other people’s criticism is a challenge. Add a mood disorder in the recipe and the impact of criticism becomes even more explosive.
Early research by Julian Leff at the Institute of Psychiatry and David Goldberg at UCLA on schizophrenia focused on the role of “expressed emotion” in families. They coined this term to essentially describe a negative and critical communication style that appeared to characterize many of the families who had members suffering from schizophrenia.
The results from their early studies were indeed impressive. Patients who lived with family members who were overly critical of them and had a negative communication style relapsed more often and quicker.
These results have been replicated across almost all major mental disorders (except one)*, and of course bipolar disorder. Patients with bipolar disorder actually have the highest sensitivity levels to expressed emotion/criticism.
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By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
Our Bipolar flea survey is going pretty well. After about a week, we have 19 responses. Most people were happy with the flea analogy, but there is always a side to bipolar symptoms that may not be flea-like at all.
Our mental symptoms effect us much more than the fleas to the dogs. I often meet and work with bipolar patients who have matured so much with their illness, and have managed to learn to cope so well with its ups and downs, that yes, at times they like having the experience of their symptoms.
I had a recent chat with Tom Wootton, who advocates this view, and from my understanding is trying to help people see through and over their symptoms. I guess when one can handle life or when one has managed to survive hell, then they can also learn to accept and live well with their symptoms.
The new-wave behaviorists have really adopted this acceptance philosophy. I guess my own acceptance concept is all about befriending bipolar disorder and all the things that come with it.
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By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
It’s that time of the year again – spring. Our interest in life literally springs up, our moods and love life improve and many patients with bipolar disorder begin to experience their first signs of hypomania.
Call it a seasonal effect, blame it on light or the forthcoming changes in our social routines, spring appears to be a period that every bipolar and their family should keep an eye on.
So what better time than now to write about our bipolar fleas – the early warning signs of manic and depressive relapses?
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By Dr. Yanni Malliaris
Dear Bipolar friends,
It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to our new bipolar blog hosted by Psychcentral.com – Bipolar Trek: The Voyages of BipolarLab.
I met Dr John Grohol quite early in my online psychology days back in 1996 when he was starting Psychcentral.com, and I was beginning my psychology degree in rainy Scotland. Since that time a lot has changed and I was always happy to see Psychcentral’s tremendous growth driven by John’s passion and energy for mental health education.
So in 2012, I am really happy and grateful that John will be hosting our blog.
Coming from a relatively illiterate Greek culture (illiterate in matters of mental health) it always made so much sense to me to educate the public, and most importantly patients, about mental health and psychology in general. We have come a long way since 1996 in all fields of mental health and people across most countries are far more knowledgeable than before.
But there are always going to be new patients (unfortunately), and always members of the public in different countries who can benefit from our knowledge.
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