Hey, Chato Stewart just named me Mental Health Hero of the Month, complete with a goofy caricature of me. Check it out at Mental Health Hero.

My wife is seeing a psychiatrist who prescribed lithium for her bipolar disorder. Recently, she visited another doctor, who prescribed Mobic (meloxicam), a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), for pain and swelling in her knee. A couple weeks later, we spent the afternoon in the emergency room, where my wife was treated for lithium toxicity and had her lithium blood level checked.

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I just watched President Obama’s “Shameful Day for Washington” speech, and I take issue with the fact that he included people with severe mental illness in a group he described as “dangerous individuals.” Here’s what he said:

“By now it’s well known that 90 percent of the American people support universal background checks that make it harder for a dangerous person to buy a gun. We’re talking about convicted felons, people convicted of domestic violence, people with a severe mental illness.”

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Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered that antipsychotics may work, at least in part, by restoring normal gene function in people with bipolar disorder. (Chen, H., Wang, N., Zhao, X., Ross, C. A., O’Shea, K. S. and McInnis, M. G. (2013), “Gene expression alterations in bipolar disorder postmortem brains.” Bipolar Disorders, 15: 177–187. doi: 10.1111/bdi.12039)

The research team did post-mortem (after death) examinations on the brains of three groups of people:

• People with bipolar disorder who never took antipsychotics
• People with bipolar disorder who had taken antipsychotics
• People without bipolar disorder (the control group)

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“We have no national database of these lunatics… We have a completely cracked mentally ill system that has these monsters walking the streets.”

— Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President NRA

Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut there have been pages and pages written and hours of audio and video created by people from all sides of the gun control/gun safety discussion. The conversation about the need for better mental health awareness and care, especially for children, is welcome. Comments like Mr. LaPierre’s are not.

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Yesterday, I served on a panel of family members who have loved ones with mental illness, where we talked to a room full of police officers (approximately 30 of them) as part of their crisis intervention team (CIT) training. NAMI-WCI (West Central Indiana) provided the training.

As I prepared my story for the presentation, I realized that I am never the one who calls 911 when my wife is experiencing a manic episode. My wife has always been the one to call, usually because she is experiencing paranoia and psychosis and feels the need to call the police for protection.

This made me wonder… why?

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Candida and I also host Bipolar-Story.com, where people share their stories of living with bipolar disorder. Visitors can post comments on each story. Recently, Maddie posted her comeback story, sharing her experience of living with Bipolar II in college, being diagnosed, and successfully returning to her studies.

Maddie’s tale is very inspirational and well-written. Definitely recommended reading for any college students who suffer melt-downs, which unfortunately is all too common. We encourage you to read Maddie’s story, “I Am Who I Am.”

College woman photo available from Shutterstock

Researchers in Denmark have discovered that treatment in specialized mood disorder clinics following a hospitalization significantly reduce hospital readmission rates.

In their study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry and titled “Treatment in a specialised out-patient mood disorder clinic v. standard out-patient treatment in the early course of bipolar disorder: randomised clinical trial,” Lars Vedel Kessing et al. followed 158 patients who were discharged from their first, second, or third hospital admission with a single manic episode or bipolar disorder.

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The Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work program enables those who receive disability benefits to try to transition back into the workplace without the risk or fear of losing their benefits. Ticket to Work offers the following:

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According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications entitled “A safe lithium mimetic for bipolar disorder,” British researchers are exploring a medication called ebselen as a possible treatment for bipolar disorder in humans. Originally developed to treat stroke, ebselen may be as effective as lithium in treating bipolar mania but carry fewer and less serious side effects than lithium.

As the article points out,

Lithium is the most effective mood stabilizer for the treatment of bipolar disorder, but it is toxic at only twice the therapeutic dosage and has many undesirable side effects.

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