The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide: What You and Your Family Need to Know

This book is awesome. It truly gives you an insight to what it's like. A glimpse.

This book is great. And very well researched.He does a good job letting us know that there are differences in the types of medications prescibed for rapid cycling vs. "traditional" bipolar. And he gives us some accurate scales to describe the degree of mania or depression.The case studies are very well chosen, and each person who reads this book should be able to find a bit of themselves contained therein.Very important: The reading level is very light and it reads like a magazine. Sometimes, these bipolar books tend to go bipolar: Either they read like a medical journal, or they read like a romance novel. Miklowitz has found the happy medium.

This book is excellent for people who *are* bipolar or have family members that are. Unlike so many books on the disorder, this one doesn't 1. solely spit up another DSM-IV hairball to describe the complexities of the actual *bipolar experience*, or 2. present a narrow viewpoint of how symptoms may manifest themselves. It made me chuckle as I read it, because it addresses the sometimes downright *silly* defiance a person can feel towards their diagnosis, and hopefully explains some of what's really going on inside a bipolar person's head to family members or people they might live with. The section on meds is still pretty updated, which is cool, and I like the fact that they mention some of the slightly less conventional means of dealing with cycling and depression--like thyroid supplementation--that some other books leave out. It also adequately discusses (I think, anyway) Bipolar II and the soft-spectrum versions of the disorder. This book isn't the one to read if you're strictly reading it for research purposes--you'll find more scientifically-orientated articles on medscape--but I think I'd recommend it as the first book to run out and get if you're diagnosed.

Simply put, this book has changed my life. After years of being in denial about my illness, or perhaps more correctly-in confusion about my illness, I picked this book up this summer and could not put it down. David Miklowitz warms up to the reader like a small town country doctor, who comes into your living room, holds your hand, looks right into your eyes-and tells you exactly what's wrong with you. He doesn't frighten you with jargon or condescending academic mumbo-jumbo or scientific psychobabble. His tone is friendly, calming, and his concepts accessible, even when he explains the biochemical basis for bipolar disorder. I particularly like how he peppers every chapter with small capsules of what other bipolars have gone through in their own words. The book is a must for every bipolar's library-newly diagnosed, veterans, those still in denial. Relatives, loved ones, friends, and professionals working in the field with bipolar disorder patients will find it an excellent resource as well.

This book talks to you, not at you. It has been helpful in seeing symptoms that I was unaware were symptoms without being pompus or talking over my head. The author keeps the flow of the text like a friend, explaning a new condition, not a life seantance, and helps find a way to build your life around the diagnoses. This is truly an uplifting and helpful format that the author has used and I recomend it to anyone, newly diagnosed, long time dealing with it, or family or friend.

When media began publicizing the increase in diagnoses for bipolar disorder a few years ago, it was all but certain that the naysayers eventually would follow. Bipolar? Yeah, right. That's just the latest fancy excuse for people who don't want to take responsibility for their own actions. That backlash has already begun. Those who doubt bipolar is real, or serious, might talk to a friend who's been diagnosed with this potentially devastating brain disorder (once better known as manic depression). It is characterized by cycles of crushing depression alternating with periods of excessive physical, mental and even spiritual energy. Anyone who has bipolar disorder will tell you: It's real. Unlike other mental health conditions, it does seem to have an "upside" -- sometimes people in hypo-manic stages can be highly creative, gregarious and energetic -- but over time, it can be debilitating, exhausting and even fatal. In a time of increasing public skepticism, it's nice that one of the nation's top bipolar disorder researchers has published a user-friendly guide to the disease for patients and their families. "The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide;What You and Your Family Need to Know" by David Miklowitz, (Guilford Press; $18.95) professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is an essential resource. Time and again in his practical guide, Miklowitz reminds those with bipolar disorder that they are not imagining their disease, and even that the disease itself can make patients prone to doubting themselves. "The absence of a definitive test (for the disease) makes it easy to forget that you have a bio-chemical imbalance and even easier to believe that you never had one in the first place," he writes. "... Many people start to believe that 'I had this illness once, but now it's under my control,' especially when they've been well for a while. But bipolar symptoms have a way of recurring when you least expect them." The book offers a wealth of material that can help demystify the disorder. Miklowitz methodically explains the disease, its symptoms and diagnosis, moves on to cogent explanations of its possible causes ("genetics, biology and stress"), then spends most of the book offering advice on how to manage it. He even offers worksheets and logs to help people come to a better understanding of and approach to bipolar illness. Books by academic researchers always have the potential to be bone-dry. But Miklowitz understands that accessibility is the goal here and is writing for the layperson, even peppering the text with real-life experiences of people with the illness . Reading some of these can be both illuminating and horrifying. Especially when they are in mania, people with this chemical imbalance can do some dangerous, illegal and destructive (to family, friends, self and even strangers) things. Informative, interesting, and compassionate, "The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide" is a valuable new resource for peopl