Because the California commitment code is designed more for the well-being of lawyers than of patients, it would have been relatively easy for me to talk my way out of an involuntary commitment.
Two other patients were waiting for their doctors, which only added to my sense of indignity and embarrassment at finding myself with the roles reversed--character building, no doubt, but I was beginn...
To be sure, wrote Hugo Wolf, I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maint...
Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.
This polarization of two clinical states flies in the face of everything that we know about the cauldronous, fluctuating nature of manic-depressive illness; it ignores the question of whether mania is...
The exuberant brain is a hopping, electric place, a breeding ground for both invention and rashness. It is by nature impatient, certain, and high on itself; inclined to action rather than reflection;...
The combination of curiosity and joy so characteristic of scientific work calls to mind the galumphing quality of exuberant play: watching, chasing, an idea first up one path and then down another, tu...
The clinical hallmark of manic-depressive illness is its recurrent, episodic nature. Byron had this in an almost textbook manner, showing frequent and pronounced fluctuations in mood, energy, sleep pa...
Recklessness springs naturally from overoptimism. Left to its own highly persuasive devices, exultant mood will nearly always trump rational thought. It is in the amalgam of fever and reason that geni...
Patient sees [lithium] medication as a promise of a cure, and a means of suicide if it doesn’t work. She fears that by taking it she will risk her last resort
Naquela noite, enquanto esperava (bordando, vendo a neve cair, ouvindo Chopin e Elgar) que meu inglês apaixonado e instável aparecesse, eu de repente me conscientizei de como a música me parecia clara...
Mania is a strange and driving force, a destroyer, a fire in the blood.
John Cade’s article about the use of lithium in acute mania first appeared in 1949, in an obscure Australian medical journal,
I was one of many who owed their lives to the black circles and squares in Schou’s family tree.
I was not only very ill when I first called for an appointment, I was also terrified and deeply embarrassed. I had never been to a psychiatrist or a psychologist before. I had no choice. I had complet...
I kneeled without ecstasy, prayed without belief, and felt as a stranger.
I have suffered from exuberance, from being scattered, a lack of focus, he says. Conflicting enthusiasms caused him to switch scientific fields several times, from high-energy astrophysics to space ph...
I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are.
I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life.
I also started giving Christmas lectures to the house staff and clinic staff that focused on music written by composers who had experienced severe depression or manic-depressive illness. These informa...