Living Well With Depression & Bipolar Disorder

I wanted to read Living Well With Depression & Bipolar Disorder: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You...That You Need To Know by John McManamy so that I could learn not only more about my own depression but also about Heidi. Her doctor has told me that she is bipolar and I don't doubt it. I sort of suspect that my mother was or is too and as I read the book, it crossed my mind that I have some of the symptoms. But that might just be my own hypochondria, who knows?

The author has bipolar and so I found the book to be especially insightful. He has a website and a newsletter called McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly. I'm definitely subscribing to it.

Some things that I learned:

Unipolar and bipolar depressions are so closely linked the only thing that seems to separate them is an episode of hypomania. So, in other words, if you don't have any of those symptoms at the time you see a doctor and if you don't think to tell the physician about other behaviors and issues, the diagnosis is unipolar depression. I think psychiatrists ask more about the other symptoms now (like irritability) than they used to but even still...for instance, Heidi's doctor said irritability is considered "mania" in a teenager. But what about in an adult?

What about a person (like me) who cycles up to a state of feeling all right before spiralling down, someone who doesn't go up so high?

I was surprised to read about a study that links bipolar disorder with panic attack syndrome.

McManamy explained the differences between types of depression and bipolar. This was particularly insightful for me:

To me, bipolar disorder is the equivalent of being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a race car.

The biology and chemistry of it all is harder to understand but I got my highlighter out and marked the book so I can refer back whenever I need to.

I found the book to be a very valuable read.