In Another Land

Some people with bipolar disorder become suicidal. Anyone who is thinking about committing suicide needs immediate attention, preferably from a mental health professional or a physician. Anyone who talks about suicide should be taken seriously. Risk for suicide appears to be higher earlier in the course of the illness. Therefore, recognizing bipolar disorder early and learning how best to manage it may decrease the risk of death by suicide.

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Episodes of mania and depression typically recur across the life span. Between episodes, most people with bipolar disorder are free of symptoms, but as many as one-third of people have some residual symptoms. A small percentage of people experience chronic unremitting symptoms despite treatment.

The classic form of the illness, which involves recurrent episodes of mania and depression, is called bipolar I disorder.

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Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy, and ability to function. Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through, the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe. They can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide. But there is good news: bipolar disorder can be treated, and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives.

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You must have wondered about this by now: if depression is a medical condition, an illness, why doesn't God just heal it? Why do I, and thousands of other believers, have to fight every day? Why can't something just zap us, shake our brains up and fix up all the chemical imbalances, and we live happily ever after?

The honest answer is: I don't know. And anyone who claims to have an answer to this complex issue, is (in my opinion) a blatant liar.

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I never spent time in a psychiatric facility after those two major episodes, but more than once it was touch and go! For many years I went on medication, stabilised, went off medication, started sliding down again, went on medication, stabilised,... You get the picture!

Things got to a point in the mid-nineties. We were driving to the shopping mall, past our local hospital, then past a traffic light where police (not traffic officers) we're stopping traffic to make way for an ambulance on its way to the hospital. We wondered about it, decided it must be some important person, and went on our way. That evening it was on the news:

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I think by now I need to give you some facts about depression. I'm not a medical person, so I have taken most of the following material from the website of the American National Institutes Of Mental Health, specifically from the section dealing with depression. I hope it gives you a bit more understanding.

Depression is a serious medical illness; it’s not something that you have made up in your head. It’s more than just feeling "down in the dumps" or "blue" for a few days. It’s feeling "down" and "low" and "hopeless" for weeks or months (or more!) at a time.

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Officially, as I've said, my story began in 1978 - but if I look back with the knowledge I now have, it started long before that.

The first characteristic symptoms I can remember date from eleven years earlier, when I was a farmboy in what is now Northwest province. I should have been happy and carefree, but I wasn't - I was already battling a monster I knew nothing about, and I wasn't doing too well.

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