​About Bipolar Affective Disorder

Famous Bipolar Poets and Authors
Bipolar/Manic depressive illness is characterized by periods of depression and mania.

DEPRESSION:
The chief symptom is a sad, despairing mood. The sufferer may have some or all of the following depending on the severity of the depression:
  • preoccupation with failures or inadequacies and a loss of self-esteem
  • feelings of uselessness, hopelessness, excessive guilt
  • slowed thinking, forgetfulness, difficulty in concentrating and in making decisions
  • loss of interest in work, hobbies, people
  • excessive concern about physical complaints
  • either loss of energy or agitation
  • changes in appetite or weight - eating too little or too much
  • sleep problems - sleeping too little or too much
  • decreased sexual drive
  • crying easily; or feeling like crying but cannot
  • suicidal thoughts

MANIA:

The chief symptom of mania is an elevated, expansive mood. In the early stages, the sufferer may appear more sociable, active, talkative, self-confident, perceptive and creative than usual. As the mood gets higher and the sufferer becomes more sped up and some or all of the following symptoms may be seen:
  • extreme irritability
  • rapid, unpredictable emotional changes
  • racing thoughts, flight of ideas
  • overreaction to stimuli, misinterpretation of events
  • increased interest in activities, overspending
  • grandiosity, inflated self-esteem
  • excessive energy
  • decreased need for sleep
  • increased sexual drive, sexual indiscretions
  • poor judgment
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If you see yourself here, please contact your family doctor immediately.

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​Hans Christian Anderson
​Tadeusz Borowski
C.E. Chaffin
Patricia Cornwell
Charles Dickens
Ernest Hemingway
Johann Goethe
Alan Garner
Abbie Hoffman
Patrick Kroupa
Jack London
Margo Orum
Edgar Allan Poe
Cynthia M. Sabotka
Sidney Sheldon
Scott Simmie
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Virginia Woolf
Arthur Benson
Art Buchwald
Agatha Christie
Honore de Balzac
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Kaye Gibbons
Graham Greene
Hermann Hesse
Kay Redfield Jamison
Peter Nolan Lawrence
Kate Millett
Sylvia Plath
Emily Post
Lori Schiller
Frances Sherwood
Robert Louis Stevenson
​Kurt Vonnegut
William Blake
John Clare
TS Eliot
Edward FitzGerald
Victor Hugo
John Keats
Theodore Roethke
Walt Whitman
Lord Byron
Emily Dickinson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Frost
Samuel Johnson
Robert Lowell
Percy Bysshe Shelley
​Sara Teasdale
Alfred Lord Tennyson