For persons with bipolar disorder and their families, here is a comprehensive, practical, compassionate guide to the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment. 22 illustrations.

Take control of your symptoms--and take charge of your life If you're dealing with bipolar disorder, you already know that it’s more than a cycle of “ups” and “downs.” You may also have difficulty with depression and irritability, as well as problems with weight gain, memory, and fatigue. Dealing with these day-to-day problems can sometimes seem like too much to bear. Drawing on the latest research in bipolar disorder, stress, and health, this step-by-step guide offers a complete selection of livable, workable solutions to manage bipolar disorder and helps you: Identify your symptoms Explore your treatment options Stabilize your moods Sharpen your mind Achieve your goals This isn't a one-size-fits-all guide. It's a uniquely personal approach to your bipolar disorder that covers the full spectrum of the disease and its symptoms. You'll be able to find successful ways to regulate your moods, relieve your stress, improve your thought processes, and break the bipolar cycle--for a happier, healthier life.

Summary: You'll go inside the challenges of bipolar disorder, through dozens of true stories written by those with the disorder and by those whose lives have been touched by the disease.

"The author, a psychiatrist, distills everything readers need to know about bipolar disorder. In down-to-earth language, he explains what bipolar disorder is and how readers can live their best life with the help of medications, therapy, the support of family and friends, and medical care. This is a resource for the newly diagnosed or those seeking rapid answers to the most common questions about bipolar disorder"--

After receiving a bipolar diagnosis, you need clear answers. Bipolar 101 is a straightforward guide to understanding bipolar disorder. It includes all the information you need to control your symptoms and live better. Authored by both a psychologist and a mental health expert who has bipolar disorder herself, this pocket guide is the only book on bipolar disorder you'll ever need.

Whitley, one of the world's leading experts on cave paintings, rewrites the understanding of shamanism and its connection with artistic creativity, myth, and religion by interweaving archaeological evidence with the latest findings of cutting-edge neuroscience.

When bipolar disorder afflicts the person you love, you suffer too. How have other couples learned to manage the relationship strains caused by this illness? What can you do to provide your partner with truly helpful nurturance and support? No one cares more deeply about these questions than Dr. Cynthia Last, a highly regarded therapist/researcher who also has bipolar disorder. Sharing stories and solutions from her own experience and the couples she has treated, Dr. Last offers heartfelt, practical guidance for getting through the out-of-control highs and the devastating lows--together. Learn how you can help your spouse come to terms with a bipolar diagnosis, get the most out of treatment, and reduce or prevent future mood episodes, while also taking care of yourself.

Caitlin McPherson lived a life most would envy. Married to wealthy biotech wunderkind Jeff Llewellyn, she was confident of her place in the world as a beloved wife and psychiatric nurse practitioner. She believed science holds the answers to everything -- perhaps even immortality. But following her husband's sudden death from a tragic falling accident, Caitlin found herself a young widow, shattered and hectored at every turn by the media. In search of privacy, she flees Seattle for Desert Hills, a small town in the California desert, and reinvents herself as a massage therapist. As she forms ties with the people of her new hometown, she struggles to make sense of her radically different life and the old life she left behind. But there is no escaping fatality. Caitlin soon becomes caught up in a puzzling murder investigation and begins to question the circumstances of her husband's accident. The nature of reality, she soon discovers, may not be as concrete as she once believed. Written with passionate sensitivity from one who has witnessed the suffering of grief, Touched by Fatality beautifully illustrates how a tragedy can open our eyes to a greater reality and the importance of forgiveness.

Our existence is increasingly lived at a distance. As we move from flesh to image, we are in danger of losing touch with each other and ourselves. How can we combine the physical with the virtual, our embodied experience with our global connectivity? How can we come back to our senses? Richard Kearney offers a timely call for the cultivation of the basic human need to touch and be touched. He argues that touch is our most primordial sense, foundational to our individual and common selves. Kearney explores the role of touch, from ancient wisdom traditions to modern therapies. He demonstrates that a fundamental aspect of touch is interdependence, its inherently reciprocal nature, which offers a crucial corrective to our fixation with control. Making the case for the complementarity of touch and technology, this book is a passionate plea to recover a tangible sense of community and the joys of life with others.

A longtime columnist for the Raleigh News and Observer, Cornelia Battle Lewis earned a national reputation in the 1920s and 1930s for her courageous advocacy on behalf of women's rights, African Americans, children, and labor unions. Late in her life, however, after fighting mental illness, Lewis reversed many of her stances and railed against the liberalism she had spent her life advancing. In Battling Nell, Alexander S. Leidholdt tells the compelling and ultimately tragic life story of this groundbreaking journalist against the backdrop of the turbulent post-Reconstruction Jim Crow South and speculates about the cause of her extraordinary transformation. The daughter of North Carolina's most prominent public health official, Lewis grew up in Raleigh, but her experiences at Smith College in Massachusetts, and later in France during World War I, led her to question the prevailing racial attitudes and gender roles of her native region. In 1920, Lewis began her storied career with the News and Observer. Inspired by H. L. Mencken's scathing criticism of the South, she soon established herself as the region's leading female liberal journalist. Her column, "Incidentally," attacked the Ku Klux Klan, lobbied against the exploitation of mill workers, defended strikers during the notorious communist-organized Gastonia labor violence, mocked religious fundamentalists who fought the teaching of evolution, and decried lynch law. A suffragist and a feminist who saw women's rights as inextricably linked to human rights, Lewis ran for state legislature in 1928 and was one of the first women in North Carolina to be admitted to the bar. In the 1930s, however, Lewis faced repeated institutionalizations for a debilitating bout of mental illness and sought treatment from Christian Science practitioners, spiritualists, and psychotherapists. As she aged, her views grew increasingly reactionary, and she insisted that she had served as a communist dupe during the Gastonia strike and trials, that communists had infiltrated the University of North Carolina, and that many of her former progressive allies had ties to communism. Finally, many of her opinions completely reversed, and in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board decision, she served as an influential spokesperson for the South's massive resistance to public school desegregation. She continued to espouse these conservative beliefs until her death in 1956. In his detailed retelling of Lewis's fascinating life, Leidholdt chronicles the turbulent history of North Carolina from the 1920s through the 1950s, as industrialization and racial integration began to tear at the region's conservative fabric. He vividly explains the background and ramifications of Lewis's many controversial stances and explores the possible reasons for her ideological about-face. Through the extraordinary story of "Battling Nell," Leidholdt reveals how the complex issues of gender, labor, and race intertwined to influence the convulsive events that shaped the course of early twentieth-century southern history.