I'm sitting at Dad's reading the Baltimore magazine while he's resting. I just read a great article about a young woman/mom living with bipolar disorder and writing aout it. Apparently she's doing a phenominal job of making a difference in the lives of others. SO cool. She blogs for belief-net and has written two books that may be of interest.

Here's a link to her site if you're interested:

http://www.thereseborchard.com/Site/Home.html

Dotsie, thanks for that link. I just sent it to my brother. The videos, especially the one about being the caretaker, are interesting and hopefully will be helpful for them.

This is an excellent source.

http://www.juliefast.com/

Mental illness has so many phases and differences it is usually hard to diagnose from what I read. My father was a split personality. He was sweet and loving one minute and ready to kill you in the next, it is truly scary to see it happening. My ex granddaughter in law was bi polar and I still feel sorry for her. It is so dibelitating.

Bi polar was hard to diagnose in my case. For 25 years I would show up at a Psychiatrists office looking for help during the depressive cycle and be put on antidepressants. It wasn't until I was in the hospital for substance abuse (alcohol) that a Doctor saw me over a period of time and could therefore track my moods. The Doc that figured out was was going on said that one day he would see me up and chatting with other inpatients and the next day find me curled on the couch with tears running down my face. After watching this for a week or two I was put on Lithium and Abilify to stabilize my mood swings....for the first time in years I knew what it felt like to be the same person with the same temperament every day. For all those years I never went to a Psychiatrist when I was 'up' and feeling good so they never saw that side of me. Finally getting the right diagnosis and the right medication I was able to put the substance abuse behind me as well as the mood swings. I guess a true diagnosis is a hard thing to coe by when the doctor sees you for brief 15 minute apt.

Boy isn't that the truth. Most just want us in and out as quick as possible, and want to shove pills down our throats.

If a person is mentally ill do they know it? Kind of like if a tree falls in the forrest does it make any noise?

I always think of that as the difference between neurosis and psychosis. Neurosis you know you are neurotic but a true psychotic doesn't know they are so. I have no idea if that is right or not, just my guess.

I think it can take a long time before you realize that there`s something different going on inside of you that doesn`t go on inside of other people. I know I grew up baffled (and with that constant feeling of failure and not measuring up) because nobody seemed to be able to understand, or want to understand, and I couldn`t figure out why I was so different from everyone else in my family. In a way, the diagnosis of dysthemia (chronic low-grade depression) was a relief, because it helped me to understand that there was a chemical imbalance behind my ineptitude...it helped to alleviate those feelings that I was a big mistake, which was my predominate experience throughout childhood and especially teen years.

I know now that depression is a lifetime companion and so I`ve learned how to recognize, manage, treat and co-exist with it. I see others suffering from mental illness who are NOT aware that they are ill, and they make life miserable for themselves and everyone around them. I think that self-knowledge empowers, and believe that if some of these people could be diagnosed, it would empower them to take control of their illness rather than allowing it to control them and their lives to such a distructive degree.

I feel deeply that your wisdom shines through your post..thank you for sharing.