Living Bipolar by Landon Sessions

it’s educational for all involved.
    Once families see there are other families in the same predicament, and try to understand the nature of their loved one's illness, the end result is a better understanding of the situation as a whole. And the same thing is said for substance abuse. With substance abuse we are willing to point a finger and say this is a weak willed individual. We know drugs can kill. We know drugs can worsen the pre-existing psychiatric condition, let alone Bipolar disorder. From a family's perspective, why does someone want to work against themselves? You know you're ruining yourself by doing this, whether it's a standalone illness of addiction, or the co-morbidity of addiction and Bipolar disorder. These are difficult things for families to accept.
    I think what we need to do, though, is think of the analogy of diabetes, or any chronic illness. Why does the diabetic continue to not exercise? Or why do they not continue checking their blood sugar regularly? Why does the diabetic patient persist with an unhealthy diet? Why do they continue without having a full investment to help themselves in regards to their health with diabetes and their well-being? So other families in other settings can get very, very frustrated to, when the individual has a setback with their diabetes. Just the same as any other problem with medicine, it's a matter of trying to understand the nature of the illness, how much can be done, what kind of research is available, what kind of resources are available for the individual with the affliction?
    If you try to manage it from this point, from the family's perspective, it can be very challenging, but it's vital that the family is not punitive, as that has no place with recovery.
    Does daily stress exacerbate the Bipolar illness for the individual who is taking their medication? And if yes, what techniques can Bipolar people use to help keep their daily stress down?
    The usual buzz on stress is we get back to the diathesis stress model. Some stress probably precipitated the illness, and there is the underlying predisposition for the illness itself and something happened to cause it. Whatever the signal event was who knows. It depends on who's doing the looking. People on the outside looking in, might say well that stress didn't do anything to me when I went through my life event, such as adolescence, which can cause someone else to become Bipolar. Therefore, someone else might say, “Adolescence wasn't a big deal for me, why would it be a big deal for another person?” But it's driven by the individual, and their genetic makeup.
    Whatever stress may have precipitated the Bipolar illness, though, it seems like once it starts the illness has a life of its own. It doesn't seem like, at least some of the information that you gather, the Bipolar illness needs stress to make it any worse, or better, rather it just has a life of its own . The Bipolar illness travels its own course, and you can still have breakthrough mood disturbances, whether you’re on medicine or not, although the longer you're not being treated the worse the Bipolar illness is going to get. Yet, I think over the course of time people can be susceptible to chronic or catastrophic stress, and it can affect their mood. Even when you're taking medication, and I think it's intuitive to think that way, but over the course of time seeing patients, it just doesn't follow the usual textbook story, at least in my practice anyway, that you don't need to have stressors to worsen the illness.
    Having said that, stressors do exacerbate the Bipolar illness . Just like anyone, a healthy person, or a person with a mental health problem, maintaining good health is a matter of how do we handle stress in our lives ? I think this is across the board, with any human being, how do we handle stress, and how do we define the stressors in our lives, and how do we define stress period? What do we consider stress? Is it a negative thing, or is it