Posted by gardenergirl on September 3, 2005, at 11:03:59
In reply to Re: BP III question » gardenergirl, posted by fires on September 2, 2005, at 22:38:57
Great article, thanks for posting the link.
A couple of quotes struck me.
"....one set of diagnostic criteria had it, “inappropriate punning,” a behavior I hoped I had never exhibited, though I had my fears..."
Oh lordy, that might mean my whole family of inlaws has bipolar! They're incorrible with punning. ;)
“As more and more people are taking antidepressants, more and more bipolarity is being exposed, because anyone who becomes hypomanic on antidepressants is bipolar,” says Ivan Goldberg, a psychiatrist with offices on the Upper East Side.
I'm not sure I agree with this. I still wonder where the line is drawn between hypomania and simply NOT being depressed and returning to your baseline personality. Along the same lines, this quote by Kay Redfield Jamison really struck me. (I missed a couple of chances to hear her speak recently, darn it!)
“The distinctions between hypomania and a state of exuberance can get very blurred,” says Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry and author of several key manic-depressive texts, including a memoir of her own experience with the illness, An Unquiet Mind. “Exuberance—high energy, high mood, ebullience—is very understudied and extremely underappreciated as a vital emotion. It’s tied up with curiosity, adventure, and scientific discovery; it’s getting reignited when you would otherwise fall over; it’s adaptive. But hypomania, when it’s associated with depression, the worsening course of a disease, increased alcohol and drug use, financial ruin, or constant emotional turmoil—none of those things are adaptive. It’s easy to romanticize a pathological state, to say this is the result of a very romantic temperament. Certainly, in my own life, I spent a long time saying ‘This isn’t so bad,’ and nearly died because of it.’”
I think it's the adaptive exuberance that some folks also call hypomania. You know, there's nothing wrong with a good mood and a sense of humor in general. It's the maladaptive behaviors that might be more hypomanic in nature, as she says above.
Still, it's a difficult thing to parse out.
regards,
gg
poster:gardenergirl
thread:549848
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050901/msgs/550323.html