Top Ten “Bipolar Today” Posts of 2011

Published December 31, 2011 | By Daniel Bader

Well, the new year has just rolled around, and it seemed like a good time to look back over some of the stories that have been covered this year and which one garnered the most attention. If you’ve just arrived on the site, this post will give a quick introduction to the pages that have had the most impact.

#10 – New Biography of Virginia Woolf Discusses Bipolar Disorder and Loss

While Virginia Woolf’s bipolar disorder has been long known, Alexandra Harris’ biography is the first that I know of to directly tie her bipolar disorder to the themes of her creative work. Especially important is the sense of loss that many bipolar people feel when coming to terms with the damage that bipolar disorder has done in their lives.

#9 – Living With a Bipolar Husband

My wife was the author of this post about what it is like to live with, well, me. There certainly seems to be a lot of interest in learning about keeping stable relationships with a bipolar spouse, and Kathy gives a lot of advice about how to handle mood episodes and how to think about the situation as a whole.

#8 – Going Public Today: Why I’ve Decided To Stop Hiding

I originally was writing this entire blog anonymously, but at the end of October, I decided to write under my real name. After fifteen years of hiding my condition, I realized that the hiding itself was doing a great deal of harm in itself. The decision was one of the hardest I ever had to make, but I stand by it.

#7 – Can a Bipolar Person Lead a Normal Life?

This blog post was about happiness as much as anything else. It discussed different senses of “normal” and concluded that, yes, we can lead a normal life, so long as we focus on what is most important, which are the things that make us really happy.

#6 – Filipino Café Celebrates Bipolar Disorder

This news item went a little bit viral on Facebook when one of the patrons of “Van Gogh is Bipolar” found my post and put it on the site’s Facebook page. It is about a café in the Philippines that bases its entire menu and culture around bipolar disorder, and really celebrates the condition.

#5 – Bipolar Disorder in the Mainstream: Homeland Season One Spoilers

I decided to do a special bipolar-centred review of the television show “Homeland.” What I was interested in looking at was the ways in which bipolar disorder was portrayed on the show, how well it reflected real life, and how the disorder was portrayed to non-bipolar people. In the end, I thought the show did a very good job, but I had some concerns, especially with the portrayal of ECT.

#4 – TV’s Homeland Has Bipolar Main Character

An early news item I did about “Homeland” also reached the top ten. The show never explicitly says that Carrie Mathison has bipolar disorder until the eleventh episode, but I had dug up an obscure interview with Claire Danes, who plays Carrie, in which she discusses how she met bipolar people to prepare for the part. Combined with a lot of people trying to figure out what “mood disorder” Carrie was talking about, this post got a lot of attention.

#3 – Newt Gingrich’s Alleged Bipolar Disorder Becomes Issue

This is only one of two posts I wrote about the current election, and it came out of an extremely disturbing article written about Newt Gingrich’s mental health. The article in question first argued the Gingrich may be bipolar and then pulled out all the rhetorical stops in insulting people with mental illnesses. It shows the ways in which truly vile talk about mental health can still be considered “acceptable,” provided it has the right target.

#2 – Brain Harvesting Practices Lead to Law Suit

Yes, the second-most-popular post this year was about a misunderstanding between a woman and a physician who harvested her husband’s brain. With pathological brains costing $150,000 each, the ethics of consent and appropriate brain harvesting all became an issue in this story. I really didn’t expect this story to become as popular as it did. Ah, the internet!

#1 – Avoiding Freak Shows: Reality Television and Mental Illness

This is I my favorite blog post of the year, and I was happy to see that it had the most traffic. It discusses the ways that mental illness is portrayed on reality television and the kinds of prejudice and outright mockery that can easily occur. I try not to simply be negative, but give some positive suggestions as to how reality television can deal with mental illness sensitively and safely.

Honorable Mentions – Information Pages

While I only counted my blog and news items for this list, my information pages also had a lot of traffic, which I was quite excited to see, as they took me a lot of work to put together. If they had been eligible, my general introduction, as well as the articles on symptoms, causes, medications and women all would have been in the top ten. In fact, the article on symptoms was the most trafficked page on my site this year (excluding the homepage, of course).

Honorable Mentions – Lost in the Shuffle

Occasionally, there are some posts that kind of get lost in the shuffle and despite putting a lot of work into them, never really caught on. Here, I’d like to give a last few honorable mentions to some of those sites before they disappear into the obscurity of the archives forever:

Bipolar Disorder and Skepticism: My Philosophical Journey – This article discusses the ways in which bipolar disorder affects me as a rational person, not simply as an emotional one.

The FDA Versus the WMA: Why the Recent Cariprazine Trial Was Unethical – This article uses a recent trial to show the ways in which the FDA and the World Medical Association are currently at odds over research ethics.

Excuses, Excuses: Hypomania Symptoms and Moral Responsibility – This article discusses some of the issues that arise when it comes to taking responsibility for our actions, and the difficulties in knowing what it our doing and what is the disorder’s (or both).

Conclusion

If you’ve been a regular reader this year, I hope you’ve enjoyed some of the highlights of the last year. If you are new to the site, this list can provide a brief introduction to Bipolar Today.

More Genetic Markers Found for Bipolar Disorder

Overcoming Powerlessness: How To Get a Bipolar Person Help

Avoiding Freak Shows: Reality Television and Mental Illness

Andrea Sinclair says:

January 5, 2012 at 5:34 pm

Hi Daniel,

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog. Keep it coming!
I’m going to check out the show Homeland. I’ve often felt that a tv show should have a main character with a mental illness that can portaray it in a realistic way. Most shows depict people with mental illness as dangerous or the bad guys. The truth of the matter is that your more likely to be harmed by someone without a mental illness.

Andrea

Bipolar Today

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