Sharing this now is very scary. I wrote it two years ago and hid it in a private blog. Only my first postpartum episode in 1973 had definite psychotic features.When I am manic, I occasionally find it hard to distinguish among books I have read, movies and plays I have viewed, and what I have actually experienced. And when I am manic, I remember hundreds of books I have read, movies I have seen. What fueled this episode, by far the worst one, was a pregnancy spent editing psychiatric books about schizophrenia. The most frightening fantasy/dream of that 1973 episode turned out to be straight from the surrealistic Fellini film, Juliet of the Spirits.

  As a social worker, I have worked with bipolar clients. When you have seen one manic depressive, you have seen one manic depression. People can't assume they know what the diagnosis means. I am horrified how many young children are being diagnosed as bipolar and given anti-psychotic drugs. As recently as 1993, when I was studying psychopathology in social work school, we were taught that bipolar disorder could not be diagnosed until the late teens. Some of the psychiatric "discoverers" of childhood bipolar disorder have been exposed for being in med with Big Pharm.

I had a postpartum episode in 1973 that was not diagnosed. First I was manic; then I was depressed. From 1974 to 1985 I was stable; staying at home with my 4 daughters were some of the happiest years of my life. Pregnancy and breastfeeding evened out my moods.

In 1985 my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and exhibited drastic personality changes from his shy, gentle self. That seemed to shake something lose in my psyche, specifically his having briefly molested me when I was 12.  I had always kept it a secret from my family; my oldest daughter had just turned 12 and I didn't want her to be around my dad. My younger brother had a florid psychotic episode; spending the night with him elicited a mild manic episode. In November I was diagnosed as bipolar and have been treated with therapy and medication ever since. I am skeptical of the biochemical model. There is no bipolar illness in my huge extended family.