RonPrice

I have many a blog on the internet. But if I focus on my illness, is it best to place postings here? If so, the following is my first post, first blog item:
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This is both a longitudinal account, going back to my birth, and a short term account taking in my most recent experiences in the last week or so, of my experience with manic-depression(MD) or bipolar disorder(BPD) as it has come to be called in recent years. Some of my personal context for this illness over the lifespan in my private and public life, in my relationships of family of birth and of marriage, of work and now retirement and particularly some of my 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 and my wife’s illness and my/our many moves over the years on the other, should provide mental health sufferers, clients or consumers, as they are now variously called these days, with an adequate information base to make some comparisons and contrasts with their own situation, their own predicament whatever it may be, and thereby gain some helpful knowledge and understandings.


1.2 Many do not feel comfortable going to doctors, to psychologists, 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. Still others do seek help and try to work things out themselves. They 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 MD and BPD. 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 14,500 words is part of my own small part in reducing the damaging stigma associated with BPD and what might be termed "my coming out."