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It took me a while to read all the way through the article, because I was doing things with my family. And maybe that is exactly the issue. The author of the ar

It took me a while to read all the way through the article, because I was doing things with my family. And maybe that is exactly the issue. The author of the article reaches a happy ending when she reflects on involvement with children and hoped-for grandchildren. The anecdotes she relates about her treatment, by the way, reflect the how far understanding of bipolar mood disorders and their treatment has come in the last few decades. She writes as a sixty-year-old with decades of treatment behind her. If you are the age of a typical Hacker News user, you are younger, and today in 2013 if you seek treatment your doctor or psychologist has a much better experience base and theoretical framework to work from in designing your treatment. The author's main point about what needs more attention in treatment of bipolar mood disorder I cannot fully agree with. Unlike her, I have lived in more than one country of the world for a long span of my life, and at a slightly younger age, I have decades of my life that were spent looking back at living a very culturally and linguistically different place, where "self" plays a very different role in individual lives. Human beings get better as they become more connected to their communities, not usually as they become more self-absorbed. (I'm looking for a link just now about that--perhaps I'll add it in an edit if I find the link I'm looking for.) It's great that the article author has family and community connections. The best reason to take individually prescribed medicine is to help build up interpersonal relationships. Preoccupation with self-identity is not a cultural universal, but being with and dealing with our fellow human beings is.

logn 14y ago
I think the author is focusing on the "self" in terms on her conscious state and how she feels. Like the difference between being drunk, sober, stoned, or hyped up. Look at patients on heavy anti-psychotics and you'll know what she means. Doctors focus on stabilizing people, not making them feel normal. If you can get up and shower and go to work, they're happy. They don't care that you might feel completely drugged.
- andreasvc 14y ago
  No I do not think so. What you describe are called mental states, which are transitory; the self is a relatively persistent concept, spanning one's personality, identity, and life experiences. The author is arguing that rather than just suppressing symptoms with medication, an important part of recovery should be to develop a new self-image that includes the disorder. The medication doesn't help in this regard, but apart from that there are the things one did during episodes which can be very hard to rhyme with one's previous self-image. tokenaudult's point of other cultures not having such a focus on the notion of the self is very interesting; it seems to completely undermine the idea that the self is key to recovery. It is very typical that stories about mental health end with some suggestion that is going to solve it all, but to me it's clear we are simply stumbling through the dark.

logn 14y ago

I think the author is focusing on the "self" in terms on her conscious state and how she feels. Like the difference between being drunk, sober, stoned, or hyped up. Look at patients on heavy anti-psychotics and you'll know what she means. Doctors focus on stabilizing people, not making them feel normal. If you can get up and shower and go to work, they're happy. They don't care that you might feel completely drugged.

andreasvc 14y ago
No I do not think so. What you describe are called mental states, which are transitory; the self is a relatively persistent concept, spanning one's personality, identity, and life experiences. The author is arguing that rather than just suppressing symptoms with medication, an important part of recovery should be to develop a new self-image that includes the disorder. The medication doesn't help in this regard, but apart from that there are the things one did during episodes which can be very hard to rhyme with one's previous self-image. tokenaudult's point of other cultures not having such a focus on the notion of the self is very interesting; it seems to completely undermine the idea that the self is key to recovery. It is very typical that stories about mental health end with some suggestion that is going to solve it all, but to me it's clear we are simply stumbling through the dark.