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person’s personality, and if they’ve had substance abuse problems, depending on if there are other problems, such as, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder. So all these things color the individual’s type of Bipolar disorder.
    Once you understand your illness though: How does it manifest itself? What are the first signs of the illness? I think those are important things. Is there a decreased need for sleep? Or is there some sleep disruption? What’s the cycling pattern? Do you go from a depressed phase to a manic phase? How long are you in a normal phase before you might switch -- how rapidly do you switch? Does the weather or the climate affect you? Is there a seasonal pattern? Is it more apt for you to get depressed in the wintertime or more in the summer time? Is there some specific pattern you know about with your illness?
    Knowing this information just takes time. It takes charting the mood. It takes maybe reading about Bipolar disorder, educating yourself as much as you can; talking with your doctor as freely as possible.
    Are there any books you are thinking of that people can educate themselves with?
    An Unquiet Mind: A M emoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Jamison is a very good reference. This autobiography considering her stature in the mental health field, and also her recollection of her mood problems is significant. Really, any of the celebrity biographies are good sources. If you really want to get esoteric you can read the “Bible:” Manic Depressive Illness by Fred Goodwin and Kay Jamison. But really I think just the experiential world of anybody that has gone through it; any book that talks to that, you will see the differences.
    Some of the actors and actresses we know that have the illness you would never know by seeing their work. They are in the acting field, they are artistic, and you never think of them as being Bipolar or having a psychiatric illness. Those are the good places to start. There are also support groups. Through the internet you get a lot of information. There is NAMI: The National Alliance for Mental Illness. These are all good sources to learn from. The more you know about your illness , I think that’s the first thing you can do for yourself aside from taking appropriate medication.
    You have to know your illness. But with that said, once you know your pattern, once you know how the medications affect you, and once you know that even with the best of medicines -- no matter what combination you are on -- you can still have some break through mood problems. You might get a phase of depression, you might get a phase of mania, but these phases don’t reach the threshold of severity where you need hospitalization, or you need ECT, or you need a whole do over of your medication. You need to be aware of the fact that medications do wear off, and that’s parcel to anything in psychiatry. People develop a tolerance to medications. These are all known things which can help us. You know understanding the illness, and what’s the next step for us. So I think education is the most important thing .
    In terms of what’s the next step proceeding education, I had a friend who managed his mood swings by running excessively. He would run eight miles a day. It helped his sleep patterns. He usually did this when he was in a manic phase. He would have to be out there running, and he had to pound the pavements for his eight miles. But it helped him. Running was his mood stabilizer. Thus, EXERCISE is very important. Science is not quite sure yet what the significance is yet, but there is a brain chemical that is released when we do aerobic exercise that might have some benefit in depression, but we (the scientific community) are not quite sure where it fits in with Bipolar disorder that’s Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and that is released with aerobic activity. But I can’t speak fully on all of the ramifications of that.
    It’s kind of exciting because it causes or tends to help