Welcome to the Jungle: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Bipolar but Were Too Freaked Out to Ask Author: Hilary Smith | Language: English | ISBN:
B0070YNNRG | Format: EPUB
Welcome to the Jungle: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Bipolar but Were Too Freaked Out to Ask Description
Bipolar is currently the most commonly diagnosed emotional/psychiatric condition, and diagnosis tends to come when one is in one’s late teens or early 20s. And yet almost nothing has been written about it from eye level and a young person’s perspective. This book brilliantly fills that gap.
“When I was diagnosed at age 19, my parents went to a bookstore and bought me a pile of books about bipolar. I threw them away in disgust (actually, exchanged them for books of poetry)—not because I wasn’t curious about bipolar, but because all the books treated the subject with clinical rubber gloves. They were dry, annoying, and made me feel like a disease, not a person. I wrote this book because it’s the book I should have been given when I was diagnosed.”
With chapters of advice on everything from how to get off the floor after the blow of a bipolar diagnosis to how to think about psychiatry and manage your meds to how to deal with thoughts of suicide to “hippy shit” like meditation, herbs, and other non-medical bipolar helpers to navigating the healthcare system, this is the first self-help book by a bipolar young adult to other bipolar young adults.
- File Size: 541 KB
- Print Length: 208 pages
- Publisher: Conari Press (May 1, 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0070YNNRG
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,223 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #14
in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Bipolar - #27
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Biography - #57
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Pathologies
- #14
in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Bipolar - #27
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Biography - #57
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Pathologies
*****
I have read many books on bipolar illness, and I just love this book! Its intended audience is young people, but it is suitable for everyone--from teenagers to middle-aged folk like myself. It's raw, funny, and very honest, answering questions that other books just don't get near, perhaps because they're very personal. But people with bipolar illness need to know about these things, and so do their families and friends! In fact, this is the perfect book to give to others to help them to understand just what the illness is and how to deal with it.
Interesting topics include: when and how to tell your friends and romantic partners you have bipolar illness; how it really feels to be bipolar; recreational drug use, alcohol, and bipolar; cohabitation issues with bipolar; telling family; how to decide what type of professional to see; all the options and considerations in health insurance (the section on health insurance is really good for young people); managing your bipolar with food-sleep-exercise; being in college with bipolar; working with bipolar; and much more.
The book gets really specific, for example, how to deal with a social life or a significant other when you have to go to bed at the same time every night, and you have to take your drowsiness-causing meds early. One of my family members has to do this, and it's hard for people to understand about "bedtimes" and such as an adult. This book gives ideas (including humorous ideas) about what to say. I think that it normalizes and reassures people with bipolar, and is invaluable for this.
The book does contain profanity, but it fits in with the tone and writing style that appeals to many in modern youth culture, so that the book will be perceived by them as hip and cool.
This is a quick & enjoyable read (I whizzed through it this morning over breakfast), lighthearted & intended to allay fears that someone living with bipolar can never lead a "normal" life. Ms. Smith is a personable & talented writer & her approach is much less sterile than traditional books on bipolar disorder (e.g. no long lists of vague statistics, etc.), which certainly makes it tangible reading material for a wide array of people.
However, for a book meant to (thankfully!) touch upon a few more of the so-called taboo topics that we're "too freaked out to ask," (ahem, e.g. "Hippie [Stuff] that Actually Works" chapter) I was admittedly disappointed in her chapter dealing with friends & family ("Voices Not in Your Head"). Although her "keep everyone informed & happy" approach, touted throughout the chapter, undeniably has its merit, she fails to make any mention of dealing with friends & family who completely DENY or DOWNPLAY a person's bipolar diagnosis or those who BLAME the afflicted. Instead, I got the advice to "Invite them over for dinner so they can see how happy you are, how well you're doing, and how bad a cook you are" (& if you're a bipolar sufferer, you may NOT actually being doing too well, so playing up your happiness for the benefit of loved ones can be detrimental & counterproductive to receiving needed help, anyway). The stigma associated with bipolar disorder is very strong & very real (& celebrities with bipolar don't help public perception or social stigma much, either). Those afflicted are facing an upstream swim against those stigmas at home, work, school & in social affairs. The true gravity of that was seriously glossed.
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