Pennsylvania man with bp helps others heal

The Associated Press profiles, Bob Forrey, a Pennsylvania man with bipolar disorder who has had command hallucinations from God and others that told him to jump into the Susquehanna River. This months, Forrey is recognized for this work with a government agency and for his climb back to normalcy. Eli Lilly and Company recognizes Forrey with one of its annual Reintegration Awards, which are given to mental health professionals and people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who have outstanding achivements.

The awards are presented conjunction with Reintegration Today, the free quarterly magazine published by Eli Lilly and Company. Since 1997, Eli Lilly, the maker of zyprexa, has been presenting the awards. This year, Lilly presented individual awards for artistic achivement, mentorship and inspiration, and group or organizational awards for advocacy, clinical medicine, on-the-job work, continous learning, home care, social support and lifetime achivement.

Meeting times and locations have been secured

We have been blessed to have had two separate groups recently volunteer meeting places for our groups. These two groups are scheduled to begin meeting in January in Centreville, Virginia:

* The support group for those with bipolar disorder will be meeting in a second-floor classroom in the new educational wing of Centreville United Methodist Church, which is located at 6400 Old Centreville Road, which is at the intersection of Route 28 and New Braddock Road. The meetings will be held on the second and the fourth Tuesdays of each month, with an additional Tuesday added on occasion to ensure that we are meeting once every two weeks. The meetings will be held from 7:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m., with the first meeting scheduled for January 10.

We hope to see you there. If you are interested, we are looking for volunteers to coordinate the distribution of the educational materials (brochures, mood charts, food tips, etc.) that will be available at each meeting; volunteers to help coordinate our publications and management of our online sites; volunteers to help coordinate refreshments for our meetings and a variety of other things that can be done to help out. To inquire about volunteering opportunities, write bipolarhope@jayson-blair.com.


* The support group for those whose loved ones have bipolar we be meeting at the home of Thomas and Frances Blair, who live at 14369 Round Lick Lane, which is near the intersection of Round Lick Lane and Sequoia Farms Drive. The meetings will be held on the first and the third Tuesdays of each month. The meetings will start at 7 p.m., with the first meeting scheduled for January 17. For more information on this meeting, contact Fran Blair at franblair@verizon.net.

Children of bp parents are more creative

Many scientists, noteably Kay Redfield Jamison in her book Touched with Fire, see a link between creativity and bipolar disorder, but now researchers at Stanford University's School of Medicine have found that having bipolar parents can pay dividends in creativity.

A small study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, said offspring of parents with bp -- even those who did not suffer the condition themselves -- scored higher on creativity tests than those with mentally sound parents. "I think it's fascinating," study coauthor Dr. Kiki Chang, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, told the United Press International. "There is a reason that many people who have bipolar disorder become very successful, and these findings address the positive aspects of having this illness."

Review of 72-Hour Hold

Svetlana Gelman, of The Knight News at Queens College, reviews 72 Hour Hold, a novel by Bebe Moore Campbell, that “brings the world of a parent living with a mentally ill child right in your face.” Gelman sites the power of the book and writes that “there is a tiny reprieve where the reader is allowed to glimpse Trina, the daughter, who has bipolar disorder, on her meds and peacefully cuddled up with her mother.”

A 72-hour hold refers to the amount of time for which a person can be hospitalized against his or her will in California, where Campbell lives. Campbell has previous discussed how elements of the novel are autobiographical. The novel explores the difficulties for parents attempting to help children with bipolar, and how family history can become clouded by the stigma of mental illness to the detriment of all involved in the process of helping someone recover.

Music therapy used to help bipolar patients

The Journal-Star of Lincoln, Nebraska reports on Dr. Galina Mindlin, a New York psychiatrist,
who records brain waves and converts them to mood-altering musical notes, which are later transferred to a CDs for patients with bipolar to play and help with their moods. Brain music therapy was developed in 1991 by a physician at the Moscow Medical Academy.

Dr. Mindlin uses software to make brain waves sound like any number of 120 different instruments and then programs them like a piano. “People who feel restless can use the ‘relaxation’ file (part of the CD) to give an emotional down,” Dr. Mindlin tells The Journal-Star. For patients already feeling too far down, she adds, “they can use the ‘activation’ file” on the CD to bring them up.

Dr. Mindlin, 46, was born and trained in Russia. Besides her private practice, she teaches at Columbia University and is a supervising attending physician in psychiatry at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in New York City.

Seroquel appears to help bipolar depression

Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug approved for the manic phase of bipolar and for schizophrenia, is now under study for the depressive phase of bipolar disorder and the early research results suggest that the drug is almost twice as effective at reducing suicidal thoughts as placebos. "That's remarkable because the medications that we have currently, to my knowledge, have never been shown to have [that much of an impact] effect on suicide,” Dr. Joseph Calabrese, a psychiatrist, told News 14 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Calabrese, who says patients with bipolar disorder are 10 times more likely to attempt suicide than those who do not, points out that this attempts most often occur during a depressed phase, and that new research into using the drug Seroquel to combat bipolar depression is encouraging. Calabrese says, “There's a desperate need for new treatments for bipolar depression."

There are, however, a number of drugs on the market that have been shown to reduce the symptoms of depression in those with bipolar, including lithium and several antipsychotic drugs. It is unclear what the side effects of Seroquel are in bipolar patients and the drug is now awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration for use in combating bipolar depression.

Oregon mother looks for clues to her bp son's death

A month after her 36-year-old son, who had bipolar, was killed by federal agents in the Montana, Linda Watts is making little progress in her search for answers as to why the border patrol gunned him down.

Watts does not believe her son, Jeffrey Suddeth, posed a threat to anyone, according to this report in the Rockford (OR) Register Star, and feels law enforcement officials have not given her satisfactory answers. Suddeth had a criminal record and had battled bipolar disorder, but Watts believes that most of her son’s problems were behind him.

Suddeth, Watts said, was “probably hungry and sleepy” and she worries that “his bipolar was working on him, and they didn’t take time to talk with him.”

When Lady Luck met bp

In an article in the latest issue of bp, a magazine for those with bipolar, Jane Pauley, talks with author and mental health advocate Lizzie Simon about life after her diagnosis with bipolar and the cancellation of her television program NBC in an article entitled “The sanest person on TV.” Simon writes that had Pauley’s “fans learned that she was seeking help for bipolar they would not have been alone in their surprise. Pauley had never imagined that she would suffer from mental illness.”

Pauley goes into detail about the breakdown she suffered “confusing, humiliating, destabilizing episodes and mania” four years ago and the journey toward recovery that began, in part, because of the help of her husband, the cartoonist, Gary Trudeau, who noticed behavioral changes among the man that Larry Grossman, the one-time head of NBC, publicly called the sanest person in television.

According to the article, Pauley finally received the help she after she told her psychiatrist that while she was no suicidal, she could finally understand why someone would not to commit suicide. The combination of her husband’s concerns and her doctors led to Pauley being hospitalized at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York City. All of a sudden, Pauley’s celebrity status was working against her. A tabloid posted a reporter in the lobby of the apartment building where she lived in order to look into rumors she had been hospitalized.

Several years later, through therapy and lithium, Pauley was back at the top of her game, launching a new NBC show called The Jane Pauley Show, which has since been cancelled. Pauley also wrote a powerful memoir, called Skywriting, that addresses her illness. Simon writes that “the future is wide open for Pauley,” but every indication is that mental health advocacy, with a particular focus on the issue of stigma, will be an important part of her life in the future.

Other articles in this issue of bp include those on improving your moods with food; detecting bipolar among look-alike illnesses in children; a story of being African-American with bipolar; the affect of winter on bipolar patients and getting help from loved ones.

"Birds from the Thicket" Author Discusses Bipolar Struggle

Washington State resident Gerry Bradley’s first book, called “Birds from the Thicket,” touches upon overcoming great odds, including his struggle with bipolar disorder. “It’s not just for those who suffer from the disease, but for all those who are on the periphery and who are dealing with it,” Bradley told The Enid (Oklahoma) News & Eagle on Sunday. Bradley, who started working on the book seven years ago, told The News & Eagle that the book was inspired by his faith and God and a realization that these efforts are “what being a Christian is all about, helping people.” Bradley adds, “As a person of faith, I think God has been preparing me for this all my life.”

Diagnosis of Bipolar Rising Among Children

Diagnosis of bipolar disorder is rising among children, according to a news report on KOTV, Channel 6, a television news station in Tulsa, Oklahoma. KOTV reports that “experts say millions of Americans are living with extreme manic highs and depressed lows” and that while “doctors used to think it could only happen in adults, now some are saying its happening much younger.” The Tulsa station looks at the controversy surrounding bipolar diagnosis among children and the concerns among some psychiatrists that the illness is over-diagnosed or misdiagnosed.

News & Research Round-up: 11/19/2005

A new study published this month in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry and other new evidence suggests that lithium is as effective in treating rapid-cycling bipolar as depakote, something that has surprised researchers and clinicians … David Oliver, a New Jersey man, has set out on a mission to provide much needed information: information for the families of those who have bipolar. Check out the news release or his new site ... Jane Pauley continues her mental health advocacy efforts with a speech at Fort Myers' Bishop Verot High School in Florida, where she said, “If I have a goal, it’s to yank mental illness into the realm of bad things that can happen in a normal life,” adding that she choose to go public with her illness in her book Skywriting in order to “normalize the experience of mental illness.” Pauley, 54, added, “My goal is to see the attitude about mental illness normalized before the next generation” ... Bipolar for Dummies hits the shelves … Lithium has been used during pregnancy for more than four decades, but quantification of fetal lithium exposure and clinical correlations of such exposure are limited. This study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry examines perenantial complications of lithium use … A report in the November issue of Cell Metabolism reveals powerful effects of light on the adrenal glands, a finding that might explain the broad benefits of bright light therapy for a variety of conditions, including sleep and depressive disorders, including bipolar … Researchers argue that bipolar children are often more creative …

Meetings Scheduled to Begin in January

Our meetings are scheduled to begin in January for our western Fairfax County groups for those who suffer from bipolar disorder and a separate group for their loved ones. We have obtained a warm setting in a family home in Centreville, Virginia for the “loved ones” meetings and we are working on ironing out an agreement for a church or other organization to host those who have bipolar disorder. Closer to January, as more information begins to become available, come back here of visit our meetings page for information about where and when our groups are meeting.

Welcome to the Bipolar Support Group for Northern Virginia's News and Information Blog

A warm welcome to those of you who have found your way to the Bipolar Support Group for Northern Virginia news and information website. Our main web address can be located to the right and we invite you to check out the available resources there, including educational material about bipolar, advice for loved ones of those with the illnesses, recommending reading and much more.

This blog is used to update members of our group and others out there on the Web of news and information about our group, and information about bipolar that might be of assistance.

Good luck on your journey.