[RonPrice]

I intend to post a series of instalments here on bipolar disorder(BPD) in the hope that my series of posts may be of use to others who suffer from a similar problem. I will post this first instalment and see what response there is before posting the 2nd part.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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1.1 This is a longitudinal, retrospective account going back to my conception in October 1943. I make reference to a genetic predisposition to bipolar disorder(BPD) due to a family history of affective disorder in a first-degree relative, my mother(1904-1978). She had BPD, although her disability was never given that medical diagnosis. About half of all patients with BPD have one parent who also has a mood disorder. There is, therefore, a clinical significance in my mother’s mood disorder in the diagnosis of my own BPD. There is an unquestionable justification for the inclusion of the family in the diagnostic process and any understanding of the disorder in my particular case as well as the cases of others. I make this point as an opening remark and pass on to my story.

1.2 My account also provides a statement of my most recent experiences in the last year, 2007-2008, with manic-depression(MD) or BPD as it has come to be called in recent years. Some prospective analysis of my illness is also included with the view to assessing potential long-term strategies, appropriate lifestyle choices and activities in which to engage in the years ahead. For the most part, though, this account, this statement I have written here in some 26,000 words is an outline, a description, of this partially genetic-family-based illness and my experience with it throughout my life.

1.3 Some of the personal context for this illness over the lifespan in my private and public life, in the relationships to my family of birth and my two families of marriage, in my employment life and now in my retirement are discussed in this document. I include some of what seems to me my major and relevant: (a) personal circumstances as they relate to my values, beliefs and attitudes on the one hand--what some might call my religion as defined in a broad sense; (b) family circumstances; for example, my parents’ life and my wife’s illness; (c) employment circumstances involving as they did: (i) stress, (ii) movement from place to place and (iii) my sense of identity and meaning; as well as (d) a range of other aspects of my day-to-day life and their wider socio-historical setting. This lengthy account will hopefully provide mental health sufferers, clients or consumers, as they are now variously called these days, with a more adequate information base to make some comparisons and contrasts with their own situation, their own predicament whatever it may be, and hopefully gain some helpful knowledge and understandings.

1.4 This document will also assist those assessing my suitability for: (a) employment, (b) for a disability pension of some kind and/or (c) a volunteer public or private office. This document should help those needing to make such an evaluation make their decision a more informed one as they go about assessing my capacity to take on some task or responsibility; or as they go about assessing the degree of my incapacity.

1.5 Many do not feel comfortable going to doctors, to psychologists and, more especially, to psychiatrists. Perhaps this is part of a general distrust of certain professional fields in our world today. Perhaps it is part of a general public being more critical. Others do seek help; still others try to work things out themselves and there are, of course, various combinations of those who try, those who have given up and those who go back and forth between the two poles of trying and not trying to sort out their disorder. Many often find the journey through the corridors of mental health problems so complex, such a labyrinth, that they give up in despair. Suicide is common among the group I refer to here—the sufferers from BPD and I could include depression(D) as well as a range of other illnesses and life battles of a traumatic nature. This account may help such people obtain appropriate treatment and, as a result, dramatically improve their quality of life. I think, too, that this essay of more than 26,000 words and sixty-four A-4 pages(font 14) is part of: (a) my own small part in reducing the damaging stigma associated with BPD and (b) what might be termed “my coming out.”--Ron Price, Australia