My profession is Certified Peer Specialist for the Medical College of GA. One of my roles is to help train the med students, residents and faculty about recovery and to share my own personal recovery story. I also faciliate groups on the inpatient unit where several consumers have said that I have given them hope that there is more to life than just having an illness. Having BiPolar Disorder definately contributed to my success as having a diagnosis of a chronic mental illness is a criteria for becoming a certified peer specialist. I balance having BiPolar with other pursuits by not allowing the disorder to consume me. I am a person first and I focus on that and the things that I like to do as a person, not as a person with a mental illness.

Gifted and highly intelligent people are known to have episodes of the behavior named Bipolar. The authors of the DSM admit they don’t know what causes any of the behaviors they call mental illness.

The fact that it happens episodically suggests Subliminal Distraction. There is no publication that points to this problem as a cause but it would be worth investigation if you have symptoms.

Simple precautions with Cubicle Level Protection would prevent exposure and if it is the cause of your symptoms they will, over time, disappear.

This problem is a form of operant conditioning, subliminal accidental OP, and there is no effective drug or therapy that would help. Prevention, not treatment, is the solution designers and engineers developed when the problem appeared in business offices in the 1960’s.

Isn’t it worth your investigation?

To L K Tucker . . . Bipolar isn’t a “behavior” it’s an illness. Anyone who’s experienced it will tell you, it’s a real, internal experience. It produces certain behaviors. Whatever else you’re talking about isn’t helpful unless you explain where your getting your lingo from. However, operant conditioning is an over simplification when discussing human behavior. Needless to say, psychology wasn’t born in an office in the 1960’s.

LK….
“Simple precautions with Cubicle Level Protection would prevent exposure and if it is the cause of your symptoms they will, over time, disappear.”

What do you honestly think Bi Polar is?? A Choice?? Or something created by their environments??

Those with ANY MI did not ask to have them no more then the child born with type 1 diabetes.

BP is a more complex condition then PA, PTSD, etc..it has been found in families, just as schizophrenia has been. Those with these types of conditions are not ‘products’ of anything other then short circuited, failed genetics. Therefore to categorize as you have fails each of them and those who are sincerely working to gain control of their lives and conditions.

Thats my 2 cents worth…

Try to educate yourself more before you go spouting off ‘propaganda’.

I am a medical school professor who has succeeded in my profession and my research BECAUSE of my hypomania and IN SPITE OF my depressions and my alcohol dependence. Certainly the alcohol dependence came about because I was medicating my bipolar swings with booze. Within the last couple of years I have been medicated with lamotrigine and buproprion and life is vastly better. The driven intense hypomanic states are largely gone as are the extreme lows. A HUGE change is that I seldom drink; the craving for alcohol is gone. If I drink I have one or two drinks and that’s it. Now I can really enjoy the relaxing effects of alcohol. Before the alcohol would either trigger or sustain mania and the binges would last for days. I must confess that I miss the hypomanic periods to some extent; certainly my research productivity has gone down quite a bit but I no longer care. I no longer go on manic spending sprees so my financial situation has improved. In addition my teaching has improved, my presentations are at a much slower (perhaps normal!) pace and my students appreciate me much more. The motor mind and motor mouth have largely disappeared. The urge to compete is largely gone; perhaps my personality has gone flat to some extent- I am perhaps more boring; again I don’t care. I look forward to enjoying the rest of my life with some level of serenity. Compared to the craziness of the moods and the hell of the bottle this is wonderful.
Of course Bipolar disease is a biologically based psychiatric illness that is primarily related to genetic causes. My father and grandfather were both bipolar. A great deal of progress has been made in understanding bipolar illness. The basic text by Goodwin and Jamison “Manic Depressive Illness” covers recent advances in great detail in the most recent edition.
Keep up the good work Dr Fink and Joe this is an extremely important website.