mental illness issues Archives - Page 41 of 53 - Natasha Tracy Bipolar Expert

The Mind-Brain Split and Enlightenment in Mental Illness

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 22, 2012

I wrote a rather popular piece a while back called A Damaged Brain and a Mind Trying to Deal with It. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen this before as it’s part of my bio. If not, then it might be the first time you’ve heard that turn of phrase.

Commenter Reply

And recently a commenter replied:

I do not believe in this mind/body duality. I believe that you are your body.

OK, no problem. I don’t expect everyone to agree on such things. I have nothing invested in making the world agree with me.

But the thing is, I know there is a brain-mind separation. And how do I know this? Perspective. It’s your free gift with a purchase of 10 or more years of bipolar disorder.

How to Tell Someone They Have a Mental Illness Part 2/2

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 12, 2012

Continued from part one of How to Tell Someone They Have a Mental Illness.

Thirdly, I recommend printing out information about the disorder for the person. There are plenty of resources online that will tell you the basics about a disorder and if you have this information ready, the person with the illness doesn’t have to go searching for it. Books are another good option. But know the person with the mental illness may use this information in dribs and drabs as information overload is a real possibility and will help no one.

How to Tell Someone They Have a Mental Illness Part 1/2

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 9, 2012

When someone has a mental illness it can be very difficult for them to see it. The very nature of a brain illness is such that the brain itself has a hard time recognizing it. We are often so wrapped up in the symptoms that we can’t see that what we’re really suffering from is an illness and not just a bad day, bad week or bad month. This is to say nothing of anosognosia, the clinical condition wherein people don’t possess the insight necessary to understand that they are sick.

Sometimes Others Can See We Have a Mental Illness

So sometimes the people around us are the ones that realize we’re sick before we do. Sometimes it’s our loved ones that can clearly see a pattern of behavior that goes beyond unusual into pathological.

But if you know someone who you suspect has a mental illness, how do you tell them?

Mental Illness – What is ‘Normal’ Anyway?

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 5, 2012

A pet peeve of mine is when people say, “normal is just a dryer setting.”

Um. No, it isn’t. Normal is a word that means “conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.”

Normal is not just a freaking dryer setting and pardon me for stating the obvious, but I am bipolar and I am not normal.

Overcoming Bipolar Disorder at University

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Mar 28, 2012

The Bipolar Burble welcomes guest author Daniel Bader, Ph.D of Bipolar Today for today’s post on dealing with bipolar disorder in university. Bader proves again that you can do anything you want to do with bipolar disorder, you may just need to make adjustments.

I was a student for a very long time, having just finished up my doctorate after nine years of study, not counting my two years of parental and medical leaves. It was quite a challenge, and most of those challenges came not from the program, but from my bipolar disorder.

However, having gone through it, I wanted to discuss some of the challenges of being a student with bipolar disorder and some of the tricks that I picked up along the way. Hopefully, it can help others who might be presently in university or considering going there.

Challenges as a Bipolar University Student

There were a lot of challenges with being bipolar as a university student, but there were definitely three issues that dogged me through most of my program:

Isolation: Studying is an isolating experience. There’s endless research, reading and writing that is done entirely by myself. I found being alone with my moods was rarely a pleasant experience.
Fluctuating Self-Esteem: It’s hard at the best of times to evaluate the quality of our writing. With bipolar disorder, my work would often seem incredible or terrible, making it hard to do revisions.
Depression: Depression is awful, and it just crushed my ability to work efficiently. As a result, I often found myself falling behind.

Why Natasha Tracy? Why a Nom de Plume?

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Mar 17, 2012

Last week on HealthyPlace’s Breaking Bipolar I mentioned that I use a nom de plume. Yes, that’s right, Natasha Tracy is not my legal name. I don’t think this should come as a gigantic shock to anyone given as writers have been writing under pen names since the beginning of the written word.

But apparently it did come as a shock. And apparently people felt betrayed by this piece of information. And apparently some people felt like being rather nasty about it. And apparently some people felt like becoming ex-readers over it.

Well, OK, fine, that’s your prerogative. But I have my reasons for not using my real name. Here are a few.

Do Objective Diagnostic Criteria Matter in Psychiatry?

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Mar 15, 2012

One of the criticisms antipsychiatry folks like to make of psychiatry is its lack of objective diagnostic criteria. In other words, there’s no blood test that says you have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

And this is true. While today we do have blood tests for biological markers indicative of mental illness diagnosis, there is no hard and fast test that can diagnose a psychiatric disorder (except Huntington’s, for which we have discovered a gene).

The fact of the matter is no matter what is written in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or what blood we draw or which scans we do nothing diagnoses a person properly except a trained psychiatric professional.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing objective or meaningful about it.

Lights, Camera, Bipolar in Action

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Mar 8, 2012

As many people know from my last post on hypomania, last week I was filmed for a documentary by Andy Fiore. The documentary is about bipolar disorder and I was one of three people interviewed. Michael Schratter of Ride Don’t Hide, an international tour and movement to battle mental illness stigma, was also interviewed.

Emotional Overreactions and Depression

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Feb 19, 2012

Yesterday I was having a good day. This doesn’t happen to me all that often but I was being all productive and downright cheery. Miracles. Every day.

But then something happened. It wasn’t an earth-shattering thing, it was just a thing. A life thing. A thing that your average person would feel bad about but not the end of the world.

Just the end of my world.

Depression

Depression is a funny thing. Not so much funny ha ha but more funny want to slit your throat. Depression makes you believe things that aren’t true. Depression makes you believe that you are lowly, that you are nothing, that you are unlovable, that you are unlikeable, and a host of other things all seemingly designed to tear you to the floor.

And it’s really unfortunate when life events work to confirm, or seemingly confirm, these false beliefs.