Bipolar diagnosis can be eliminated – updated April 2013

April 22, 2011 2 Comments

We are working towards a world where no one will need to be labeled as bipolar.

  • How can people incorrectly labeled as bipolar reduce any disorder and eventually stop being regarded as unwell?
  • Why is there any need at all for a mental illness called ‘bipolar disorder’?

Example: LABELED as BIPOLAR

John was told by doctors that recovery was not possible and he would need psychiatric drugs for life. Both things turned out not to be true.

A prescribed drug caused him to suffer insomnia and restlessness that matched the symptoms listed for bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, there is no procedure in the UK for removing a bipolar label from medical records. Once labeled as bipolar it goes with you for life. Even if the next day a different psychiatrist were to say it was an error. The words BIPOLAR DISORDER will stay on your medical records for life. On John’s records BIPOLAR DISORDER is written and printed in capitals.

  • When will ‘ undiagnosis ‘ be possible?

Bipolar disorder is close to a perfect diagnosis for selling drugs. Anyone can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In most countries the diagnosis goes with the message, “Keep taking the psychiatric drugs no matter what happens”. Even if you fully recover from whatever was going wrong or find there was nothing wrong at all, you will still be told you must not stop taking the drugs because the withdrawal will cause ‘bipolar symptoms’. It is a strange disorder with most doctors discouraging recovery.

  1. We work with people wanting to eliminating their own bipolar diagnosis.
  2. We are also tackling the wider issue of whether anyone ever needs a bipolar diagnosis in the first place.

Bipolar disorder evolved from the diagnosis of manic depression – It is no longer the same thing

Prior to 1980 a small number of people had been diagnosed as manic-depressive but that was a different disorder. Manic depression was a disorder of mostly short episodes of disorder with mostly long periods of wellness. Many/most people only had one ‘high’ and one ‘low’ episode in their lifetime. It rarely disabled anyone. The bipolar disorder label was created in 1980 by psychiatrists in the USA looking to explain something new that was happening to people taking psychiatric drugs. Up until 1980 bipolar disorder and its description simply did not exist in the psychiatrists’ manuals.

Bipolar may not sound as bad as manic-depression but when it comes with no hope of recovery it becomes far more damaging. Gradually the drugs used to control mood cause severe physical illnesses and usually early death. In many ‘developed’ countries it has reach epidemic proportions becoming one of the top disabling health problems. Psychiatrists who say they do not experience bipolar symptoms themselves have told us that it is “…degenerative and that is why recovery is not possible.” A frightening idea that could easily take away a person’s last bit of hope.

In our work as mental health researchers and trainers the many bipolar diagnosed people we meet tend to either believe:

1) It is something they were born with/developed at an early age that they will always need drugs for it. They talk as if psychiatric drugs are more important than anything they can do for themselves.

or

2) It is mainly due to past traumas and current stresses, saying it is something they can learn to overcome with minimal use of psychiatric drugs.

We have met, interviewed, trained and spent time with enough people in each group for enough years to be convinced that the way we view bipolar disorder determines its outcome.

1) Those who believe it is incurable and place huge emphasis on psychiatric drugs gradually become more unwell, achieve less and less and have an increasingly miserable life with fewer and fewer good relationships.

2) Those who believe they can overcome the disorder using, Mood Mapping, Bipolar In Order or similar systems/techniques tend to stay well, achieve more and have an increasingly better life with more good relationships.

With bipolar diagnosis: what we believe really does become reality in almost every case. Recovery is possible for those who have hope, take responsibility and have an open mind.

 

This site is about giving people a choice about how to think about bipolar

We were taught that it was largely hereditary… “Your parents were nuts and that is why you are nuts.” It turns out there is very little truth in this. Yes, a diagnosis can run in families, however, research has confirmed that anyone can experience massive shifts in mood and so anyone can be labeled as bipolar. A lot of things we were told about bipolar disorder have turned out not to be true.

The idea that, “Bipolar disorder can never be cured. Once you have a bipolar diagnosis you have it for life.” takes away a lot of hope,  shifts power away from ordinary people and makes psychiatrists more powerful. To consider and talk about the alternative (the truth) you have to be brave. We risk being called mad when we say that we have recovered from bipolar disorder.

Eliminating disorder: To survive bipolar disorder we must to eliminate the disorder part. When friends (and ideally family too) can help us eliminate the causes of disorder we find coping, recovering and thriving become easier, regardless of who says we are still ‘bipolar’ and whatever may be meant by that.

Eliminating your diagnosis: Some doctors are starting to agree that bipolar labeling does not have to be for life. In the UK doctors are not allowed to remove incorrect or obsolete bipolar labeling from our records. While we want this to become possible, a step in the right direction would be for incorrect or obsolete diagnosis to be marked as such and  made less visible. This would allow medical professionals to consider our physical health before reading that we have an incurable disorder.

Time to stop the labeling: When we or our families are desperate it can feel good to get a diagnosis. It feels that progress is being made and useful treatment will follow. With the bipolar label comes a lot of false hope. If you have a choice, then do not accept a bipolar diagnosis. Accept that you have difficulties. Difficulties can be overcome. The bipolar label does not go away. People who accept the bipolar label generally get sicker and die younger than those who do not. Find people who used to be considered bipolar and mentally ill and are not ill now. Learn how they coped and recovered then do what you need to do to stay well. We believe it is better to be considered well rather labelled for life.

Next article = Giving people choices

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Five Keys to Mood – Adapted from Mood Mapping by Dr Liz Miller

May 16, 2013 Leave a comment

People who naturally have good mood control may be using THE FIVE KEYS TO MOOD:

  • SURROUNDINGS
  • PHYSICAL HEALTH
  • SOCIAL/RELATIONSHIPS
  • KNOWLEDGE – including experience, finance and other strategies
  • AUTONOMONY – including self-determination and purpose

People get over mood problems by:

  • making sure they spend time in SURROUNDINGS that suit them
  • looking after their PHYSICAL HEALTH
  • paying attention to RELATIONSHIPS
  • continuing to LEARN and adapt to a changing world
  • keeping HOPES alive and PLANNING for their future

Possibly you been using only some of the keys to mood?

Using all FIVE KEYS TO MOOD can help restore BALANCE to your life

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Mood Mapping – Dr Liz Miller – About the Mood Map grid

April 7, 2013 1 Comment

Dr Liz Miller’s book, Mood Mapping – Plot Your Way to Emotional Health, has two main themes:

    1. The Mood Map grid
    2. The Five Keys to Mood

The Mood Map grid is a simple, visual way to understand and record the way you feel.

It can be used to explain why some of us can be convinced we are ‘bipolar’ and how many of us are coming to realise we never were that ‘bipolar’ at all.

If you want to understand your moods or think your bipolar diagnosis may not be right then the Mood Map grid is the place to start in understanding what is going on with your feelings and moods and how to live a life without being so ‘bipolar’.

Marian Moore says, “Mood can change in an instant or gradually over time. Some people are ‘morning people’, others more nocturnal. Some days are better than others. Mapping your mood helps you see when you are at your best, your worst, and even when it might be better just to stay at home!”

Mood Mapping allows us to increase our self-awareness by allowing us to know more about how we feel and gives insights into why we do the things we do. It develops our observing-self, enabling us to see moods or emotions for what they are, and not being caught up and overwhelmed by them.

Why map our moods?

Stress, anxiety, exhaustion, and depression have always been difficult to quantify and many people find it difficult to say which of these they are experiencing. Yet without measuring these, it can be difficult to know whether things are changing much at all.

Music may help you feel better, but how much better? Is quiet meditation more effective for you? Can this effectiveness be measured and described to others? Which foods improve your mood? Without an effective way of measuring mood it is difficult to know what is affecting your mood most.

By knowing and being able to accurately describe our moods we can become better at helping ourselves and finding the help we need when we need it.

Mood Map grid

Mood Map grid

The Mood Map grid as originally developed by Dr Liz Miller:

Mood is said to have two main components:

ENERGY – shown as up and down on the map

POSITIVITY – Essentially how you feel, shown as left and right on the map

The two axes divide the map into four quarters which describe the four basic moods;

  1. Tired (which can include good reflective moods as well as normal exhaustion and abnormal depressive states)
  2. Anxiety
  3. Action
  4. Calm

Moods affect not just how a person feels but also how they behave

For example, a small child runs towards a busy road;

-       a person who is very TIRED may think “How awful, that child may die, I wish I could do something”

-       a person who is already in a mood of high ANXIETY may panic and scream.

-       a person in the ACTION mood – runs to the child and whisks them away from danger.

-       a person who is CALM can think how to avert the danger without unnecessarily alarming people.

In this example the positive moods of ACTION and CALM seem great. The reality is that there are no good or bad moods. There is a time and a place for every type of mood. As we learn from Mood Mapping, it is the ability to change to the mood we need at any particular moment that allows us to be healthiest and work well with those around us.

A Scientific Perspective

Mood most likely comes from the deepest part of the brain, where the sympathetic (flight and fight) and parasympathetic (housekeeping) part of our nervous system join. Thus when we wake up, we immediately become aware of how we feel, and then the rest of the brain can gradually work out why we feel that way, and what we are to do next.

Mood Mapping is a simple technique that is easy to learn and easy to teach.

The first step is to plot your mood at this moment by estimating how much energy you have and putting a mark on the vertical axis.

Plotting on mood map

Plotting on mood map

Then estimate how good or positive they feel and plot that on the horizontal axis. The Mood point is where vertical and horizontal marks on the graph cross.

The Mood Point can be labelled with the time and perhaps a quick note why you feel the way you do. If you feel this is not the right mood for you at this time then maybe think what you have done in the past that has helped you get the mood you want now.

Plot another point later, to see if your choice has been effective.

 

Thanks to Marian and Liz for allowing me to adapt their article from http://www.krysan.org/index.php/holiday

This is just the start of Mood Mapping. Next article: The Five Keys to Mood

MILLER, LIZ Dr., (2009), Mood Mapping: Plot your way to emotional health and happiness, pub. London, Rodale

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No health without mental health

March 16, 2013 1 Comment

“No health without mental health” is a really catchy slogan that most people seem to grasp quickly. This is a first class article about what this means in the UK at this time, with mental health estimated to be costing £105,000,000,000/year!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9928516/Its-time-to-end-the-NHS-bias-against-mental-health.html

Meeting and working with health professionals who know mental health and  physical health are inseparable has opened our eyes to a new way of thinking that is beyond the current “no health without mental health” slogan.

We want to work towards ending the strict segregation of physical health and mental health that delays treatment and excludes many who are labelled as mentally ill from essential National Health Services.

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More people are being labelled as BAD! – Bipolar Affective Disorder

March 11, 2013 5 Comments

Bipolar Affective Disorder = BAD, was created as a new category of ‘mental illness’ in 1980 by its inclusion in the Psychiatrists’ Diagnostic Manual. Prior to 1980 almost no one had heard of bipolar disorder. A story was created saying that this ‘illness’ was simply the renaming of manic depression and gradually more and more people came to believe this story.

Manic Depression was a very rare diagnosis. Bipolar is not just common, it has become an epidemic.

From one person in 10,000 being affected, psychiatry now claims that about 1 in 4 people are now in the bipolar spectrum and the number affected is increasing. Strangely, we are also told it is genetic. The story just does not make sense. A genetic problem does not go from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 4 in one generation.

What is really going on?

Firstly, Bipolar is not an illness or even a disorder. It is a label given to people who have emotional difficulties. Anyone can have emotional difficulties. These tend to be caused by relationships (e.g. a relative dying), where we live (e.g. having your home repossessed), not knowing how to take care of ourselves (e.g. eating too much carbohydrate or not getting outdoors in daylight) and concerns about the future.

People react to emotional difficulties in different ways. For those who are unable to turn to friends and family a coping mechanism is visiting the GP. In the western world GP’s have been told that emotional difficulties are best treated with sedative drugs and readily prescribe these. Unfortunately, despite many unpleasant side-effects these drugs are addictive. Once started most people find they cannot cope without the drugs. Drugs tend to destabilize moods further, such that:

Emotional difficulties >>> a visit to the GP >>> prescription drugs >>> drug induced emotional difficulties >>> visit to psychiatrist has become the most common route into the ‘bipolar club’.

The last step of labeling used to be exclusively by psychiatrists. With getting on for a quarter of the population believing they need a ‘bipolar label’ the psychiatrists have not been keeping up with the demand they helped to create. An increasingly common route has become via the internet. People are looking at lists of warning signs of emotional difficulties that have been relabeled as ‘bipolar symptoms’ and recognize themselves. Well, really it is not so much themselves they recognize but their recent way of living and coping with emotional difficulties.

Having convinced themselves by reading and often completing an on-line ‘Am I Bipolar?’ quiz, they go to see the GP and present their ‘symptoms’ just as described on-line. This describing our life in terms of symptoms tends to convince GP’s who have been trained to believe bipolar is a brain disorder, that the patient has this disorder. The GP may or may not write, BIPOLAR, but tends to allow the patient to leave with the belief they have a mental illness and that they are bipolar.

The idea of ‘I am bipolar’ has spread around the world. This has further promoted bipolar as a disorder people are being born with and something that stays for life.

There are other ways the disorder is growing. For now though:

The point of this article is to say that bipolar is a label and not a diagnosis.

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Bipolar boom continues

March 10, 2013 1 Comment

Bipolar is booming!

From a few rare cases of manic depression…

…through to the first ‘antidepressant’ induced manias in the 1950’s…

…through to the boom since the bipolar diagnosis was created in 1980…

…through the proliferation of psychiatric drugs creating more mood instability in those ready to try them…

…and now bipolar being seen in people who were previously viewed as depressed, grieving, mal-nourished or simply exhausted…

…WHY? One answer is: There is a lot of money to be made from bipolar!

However, is it not more ethical to help people recover from emotional difficulties and help them avoid becoming part of this sickly bipolar boom?

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Feelings, energy and thinking – its normal, not #bipolar

March 9, 2013 1 Comment

feelings and energy and thinking

Emotions can be considered to be a mix of our feelings, our energy and our thinking.

Perhaps almost everything now called ‘mental illness’ may really be ‘emotional distress’.

Calling it something different does not solve our problems. It is just that when we recognize are troubles are to with emotions rather than being an illness or a specific disorder, then we can help ourselves and help those we care for by gaining a better understanding of emotions.

 

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Governments creating mood disorder? #bipolar

March 9, 2013 1 Comment

The UK government’s bedroom tax does not directly affect me. Indirectly it does, as many of the people I support are struggling financially and this tax on people who receive housing benefit is already hurting them and some are becoming suicidal.

Example:

A man I know who was ‘down on his luck’ (a victim of the mental illness system) ran out of places he could stay and applied to the local council for a one bedroom place. They did not have anywhere with just one bedroom. They had a two bedroom place he could afford through housing benefit. He settled in and got his moods under control. He could be described as in-recovery. Now things are taking a turn for the worse. The new tax, THE BEDROOM TAX, means that he will lose some of his housing benefit due to having an extra room. I suggested he brick up the room he does not use, or knock the two rooms into one. His tenancy does not allow him to do anything like. He is desperate as he will not be able to pay the rent and there are no one bedroom places for him or thousands of others in the same situation.

Bedroom Tax: It sounds like a joke. What has it got to do with Rethinking Bipolar? I just wanted to give this as an example of the stressors ordinary poor folk are under that the rich psychiatrists are not going to understand. They see disorder as a chemical thing. Yes, chemistry is important, but somewhere safe to live comes first.

Here is a link to the best article I have seen on bedroom tax if you are looking for a way of surviving it, or if you are wealthier (have good contacts) it gives idea for making money from the new tax. Yes, another tax that can benefit those who are already well off. Article: http://speye.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/bedroom-tax-and-lodgers-a-good-idea-yes-from-october/

 

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Profiting from explaining #moods and #bipolar

March 7, 2013 1 Comment

If you have alwaysFor most of my life I tried. By this I mean that I mostly believed I improved things for myself and others by working hard. I believed that putting in a lot of effort would lead to good things.

In my 2004 book, ‘Stop Paddling / Start Sailing’ I describe this way of living as paddling. The stop paddling idea does not mean to stop making an effort. It is more about seeing the alternatives and then starting again with a better understanding of why sometimes trying hard works well and sometimes it does not work as expected.

By 2005 I was keen to start my training business, with an associate suggesting, ‘Stop Paddling’ as a unique business name. I wanted to help people understand that there are many alternative mind-sets and to help course participants to have more choice whether to spend their time paddling, drifting or sailing and of course to avoid sinking!

The Stop Paddling business did not go as planned and from 2006 to early 2012 I was mainly training people to understand, live with and recover from being diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder. This led to publishing the handbook on Bipolar Disorder for Nurses and Carers in January 2012.

To publish a 350 page book on bipolar disorder and to continue to teach health professionals, the public and of course those who need to recover from the bipolar diagnosis I needed to do a lot of research. I had lots of meetings with experts, read a lot of books, did lots of on-line research and worked for 4 years on mood and recovery research projects.

The authors who I met during this time who most influenced my thinking were Dr Liz Miller and Robert Whitaker (Recommended reading: ‘Mood Mapping’ and ‘An Anatomy of an Epidemic’). If you have time to read both with an open mind you will surely reach the same conclusion I, and I believe everyone else who has read these books comes to: bipolar disorder and other mental health diagnosis are only labels and not medical diagnoses. Bipolar is a label used for people who suffer from stress and anxiety who have periods of higher or lower energy levels.

For earlier generations (prior to bipolar becoming a diagnosable disorder in 1980) most people feeling anxious and stressed with variable energy levels would have been considered to simply be under pressure, in pain, needing change… Now you only need to sit in front of a psychiatrist and say you are feeling troubled for a bipolar disorder diagnosis to be a likely outcome.

This has left me in an odd situation. I continue to research and teach about what is described as a diagnosis that is really no more than a label.

In creating the social enterprise, Rethinking Health (UK) Ltd, my new colleagues helped me find a way to continue with this teaching and research through helping students see both sides of ‘the bipolar coin©’. Part of our courses are delivered using a large coin with each face used for comparison of the main alternative views.

For most who are being labelled as bipolar their biggest challenge becomes the label itself which implies little or no recovery, little hope and on-going stigma that maintains a bleak looking future which in turn maintains the disorder. As well as their original troubles they now have to cope with the stigma that stacks so much against them when wanting to get their lives back on track.

I am reminded of the statement at the top of the page and this quote…

“Madness is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome.” Albert Einstein

Tackling causes:

Whatever it is that is driving people to turn up at doctor’s offices to accept the bipolar diagnosis it will continue to make these people unwell unless something changes. Knowing what to change depends on looking at the causes of our emotional turmoil.

On our recovery courses people have found it easy to identify many possible causes. These are all things that happened in the past that set us up for difficulties with managing our emotions or things in the present that can tip us over the edge.

The likely causes are well-known. It is more challenging, yet essential, to help people to find their personal causes and triggers. Knowing what causes and triggers our troubles allows us to not just to change what we do, but also to have a good chance of making the right changes that will allow us to live a healthier life.

A fresh start:

2012 was a big year for us in figuring out what is going on and how we can help improve the prospects for the next generation.

It was also a time of realisation that we as trainers with experience of mood disorder had become part of the bipolar industry. We were being paid to effectively promote the idea of bipolar as a diagnosis and however much we were explaining that bipolar is just a theory, just using the word was helping the industry around bipolar to keep on growing and drugs to continue to be prescribed.

Although we cannot challenge bipolar without using the word ‘bipolar’, it now seems more ethical not to take a wage from this but rather keep the money we are paid in the social enterprise. This is  allowing our work to expand and so more people can have more hope after bipolar diagnosis.

This is a different kind of profit – if we can do this we can start to feel great about our work again.

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What are we recovering from? #bipolar #anxiety #grief

March 6, 2013 Leave a comment

Full recovery?

People have always recovered from mood disorders. We get anxious then get less anxious. We feel exhausted, then after a rest feel energetic again.

Is it fair to talk of ‘full recovery’? Does anyone ever fully recover? Maybe it all depends on what we believe we are recovering from?

For thousands of years it was considered normal for moods to vary throughout each day. During the 20th century a new idea formed that any more than small changes in mood were a sign of illness. By 1980 this idea allowed the new diagnosis/label of bipolar disorder. Gradually the meaning of bipolar has expanded such that only those whose moods hardly change at all can be sure of not being described as bipolar.

If we step back from the idea of most of us having mood disorder and think about what caused our moods to appear disordered, then by tackling the causes we can expect to recover. If, in our minds, we can very nearly eliminate the original cause then we can very nearly eliminate its effects on our moods.

For example, after a relative died I saw a psychiatrist. I had never met him before. After our 50 minute meeting he wrote to my GP to say that in his opinion I was suffering a mood disorder and in his opinion I was a catatonic schizophrenic. I got over my relative dying (I just have a little cry now and then) but getting over a label like catatonic schizophrenic takes a lot longer. It is a shame the psychiatrist was not able to simply write that I was grieving.

Full recovery used to be defined as being able to get back to what you used to do. Theses days I wonder if it is more about being able to move on to what you want and need to be doing.

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#Bipolar or Spiritual Awakenings – Sean Blackwell

March 3, 2013 Leave a comment

Am I Bipolar or Waking Up?Am-I-Bipolar

Author: Sean Blackwell 2011

After a powerful emotional experience Sean Blackwell was sure he was destined to be something other than a Canadian advertising man. Sean describes a close shave with death that may have contributed to what many would have seen as a manic episode. The autobiography unfolds with many seemingly chance encounters leading to the start of Sean’s new life in Brazil.

This is an exceptionally well-written and enjoyable autobiography. If you know of Sean’s current work you will have a good idea how the book ends, yet Sean tells it as it happened with only vague insights into what the future would hold for him.

Reading about ‘spiritual awakenings’ and how young people are being ‘stamped’ with the bipolar label in North and South America, has got us wondering how often manic episodes would be better described as Emotional Awakenings.

Emotional Awakenings: It seems young people who are trying to live the life others expect of them can quite suddenly have a wave of extreme emotion accompanied by bizarre behaviour. Yet, with good support people come through this without a mental health diagnosis, without psychiatric drugs, and often with a new sense of purpose.

In this book we are reminded, “The number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003” – Benedict Carey 4th September 2007 – NY Times

‘Am I Bipolar or Waking Up?’ by Sean Blackwell is full of hope and needs to be read by every parent in the western world if the bipolar epidemic is to brought under control.

Find out more at: www.bipolarORwakingUP.com

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