Daily Archives: May 12, 2012, 8:17 pm

Top Ten Terrific Things About Bipolar Disorder

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Top Ten Terrific Things About Bipolar Disorder
By Sandra Kiume
Psych Central

1. Creativity. Visual arts, performance, writing, music; in all the arts bipolar talent is common and sometimes exceptional. Patty Duke, Ernest Hemingway, Trent Reznor, Sylvia Plath, many more. The link between bipolar disorder and creativity is well-established, though further study is needed. One research finding: as many as 60% of people with bipolar disorders are writers.

A – Z of Famous People With Manic Depression
London Music Works: “28 Days Later – In The House-In A Heartbeat”

2. Energy. Not sleeping for two or three days without feeling effects is even better than modafanil (Provigil). People take all sorts of stimulants attempting to experience similar energy; if you could bottle this symptom of mania and hypomania, you’d make a mint.

3. Exuberance. Kay Redfield Jamison, prominent psychiatrist who studies and has bipolar, wrote the book Exuberance: The Passion For Life in celebration of the passion and joy in mania and hypomania. “Exuberance,” Jamison says, “is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion.” And it’s contagious. Bipolar disorder spreads happiness; think Mary Poppins.

4. Lust a.k.a. “Hypersexuality”. Unlike Mary (well, we don’t know for sure), is also a prominent feature of hypomania. People with bipolar disorders tend to be dazzling, passionate and adventurous lovers.

5. Perspective on emotions. What goes up, must come down, and back up again. Viewing life and issues from both ends makes you more philosophical about the meaning of things. Would this matter when not depressed? Would that seem a good idea when stable? Emotions become illusory flavourings.

6. Proof of the biological basis of mental illness., especially this one (bipolar), but it disproves dualism in general. More scientific evidence and ongoing research plus personal anecdotes asserting internal causes and correlates of depression and hypo/mania (as well as some environmental interactions, it’s not totally reductionist) than you could ever hope to read. Hands down, no debate here, it’s physical.

7. Lots of bipolar celebrities. “Did you know so-and-so had bipolar disorder?” is an easy conversation starter, raising an eyebrow, implicitly comparing yourself to Marilyn Monroe, Florence Nightingale or Winston Churchill.

Video of Famous People With Bipolar
Nirvana: “Lithium”

8. Depth of experience. You’ll not meet more experienced, well-travelled, multi-dimensional people. Exceptional and often unusual stories to share. Could be because people with bipolar disorders, so often adventurous, tend to be high-achievers and leaders with above average intelligence.

9. Courage. Tied in with bravado and grandiosity, at its most severe it can be dangerous risk-taking, but at its best it’s inspiring and heroic.

10. Depression. What’s good about depression, you ask? Light needs shadow, and the most profound understanding includes both. It illuminates the whole human experience.

Bipolar People
Itzak Perlman: Theme from Schindler’s List
(The Nazis murdered in the death camps among the many, people who were diagnosed with Manic Depression.)

Itzak Perlman: Theme from Schindler’s List
In its completed form.

APA Reference
Kiume, S. (2006). Top Ten Terrific Things About Bipolar Disorder. Psych Central. Retrieved on May 12, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2006/09/27/top-ten-terrific-things-about-bipolar-disorder/

I read psych central on a regular basis & receive their newsletters daily in my email. They have so much information to offer. You can set up your preferences on what topics you are most interested in & those will be the topics of articles or blog posts from their site that you will receive in the form of titles to links with a brief explanation of what is contained in the articles. This particular article on the “Top Ten Terrific Things About Bipolar Disirder” I discovered through a blog post titled “The Beauty of Bipolar” written on wordpress.com on the blog titled: “bipolarmuse”.I thank her for the find. Reading this encouraging post on bipolar is quite uplifting & supportive. It makes the diagnosis of bipolar feel that all is not ruined in life, instead there are a multiplicity of benefits that should make one feel almost “blessed” but I am sure those in our lives would not always agree with this analysis. By Jennifer Kiley

Related Link: The Beauty of Bipolar Disorder

Dictionaries

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Reblogged from The Daily Post:

Click to visit the original post

At a WordPress conference this past weekend, I learned about an online service called Wordnik that brings social interaction to online dictionary use. In addition to a word of the day, a blog, and some community features, the site has a pretty snappy search engine and provides etymologies, synonyms, contexts, pronunciations, and the ability to save word lists (for example "words I'd like to use one day").

Read more… 702 more words

by jennifer kiley i became addicted to words & the dictionary at a very young age. it enabled me to discover the meaning of life. i would start with one word & within the definition of that word I would discover another word that needed defining. it was a path of learning that led me to the understanding of my world. the people around me, when i was a child, were no help in guiding me toward knowledge. instead they wanted to keep me in darkness. i wanted to follow the light into a foundation for wisdom. reading this post reminded me of those days. i rediscovered that delight that reading the dictionary brought to me as a child when i discovered wordnik in its infancy. the site was like discovering pure joy. it is a regular tab opened always on my web browser. when i want to be amused & delve into the experience of the pure ecstacy of following the word trail, that may have started out as a feeling i wanted to understand on a deeper level, wordnik would satisfy my need. it would help me to grasp the multi-dimensions of that which i was seeking. also, when i am in the middle of working on a writing project, whether it be for a blog post or poem or a comment or working on a screenplay, wordnik is my go to source for discovering the exact word or words i was trying to think of in my mind to fit precisely what it was i wanted as the perception of my idea. this post titled "dictionaries" elaborates on a plethora of choices beyond wordnik that would satisfy any wordsmith who reached orgasmic satsifaction from the world of words & their importance to writers or anyone who wants to understand more in depth that which they are reading or speaking, or just in listening to what the world is trying to share with us. a great post worth the time to read.

‘Where The Wild Things Are’

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‘Where The Wild Things Are’ author Maurice Sendak dies at age 83
(Link for 2 Videos at end of article)

Daniel S Levine
The Celebrity Cafe.com
5/8/2012

Maurice Sendak, the legendary children’s book author behind Where The Wild Things Are, has died at the age of 83.

The New York Times first reported his death Tuesday. Sendak died Tuesday morning in Danburry, Conn. Longtime editor Michael di Capua confirmed that his death was caused by complications from a recent stroke.

Sendak was born on June 10, 1928 in Brooklyn. He was a frail child who grew up impacted by terrors such as the Holocaust (during which several European relatives died), the Great Depression and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932. The influence of these events can be felt throughout his work.

His first published illustrations came in a 1947 physics textbook and he worked for a comics publisher part time. In 1948, he started working for F.A.O. Schwarz, building displays for the store. In 1951, he illustrated Marcel Aymé’s The Wonderful Farm, his first work on a children’s book. Kenny’s Window, published in 1956, was the first children’s book he wrote and illustrated.

His breakthrough work came in the 1960s for publisher Harper & Row, starting with Where The Wild Things Are, which became a cultural phenomenon and was recently adapted into a film. His latest work was Bumble-Ardy, which was published by HaperCollins this past September. My Brother’s Book, inspired by his late brother Jack, has been scheduled for release in February.

Throughout his work, Sendak showed a dark, dream-like point of view of childhood, which many considered controversial. Nonetheless, his work is still influential for generations of authors.

Entertainment Weekly notes that Sendak was also known for his blunt opinions and dark humor. He showed that off in an interview with Stephen Colbert, which aired on The Colbert Report in January. Colbert and his audience were almost in disbelief with Sendak’s comments. At one point, he tells Colbert, “I don’t write for children…I like them as few and far between as I do adults.”

Two Video Interview with Maurice Sendak by Stephen Colbert
Videos are at end of article at the above link.