Mania and Depression

It surprises me that the official psychiatry makes a philosophical distinction between the states of mania and depression, while it is quite obvious to me that the two are one and the same. That is to say, the similarity between them is wide and profound, while the apparent difference is only a superficial nuance.

Let us consider a traffic light as an example. When it is red, it is very different from when it is green. But think about all the forces in background that are responsible for the traffic light operation. The power plant that provides electricity, the cables that conduct it, the engineering of the light bulb, the physics of light and the physiology of vision, as well as the philosophy of the city traffic and its regulation - all are absolutely the same in both states, and what is different is only the position of a small relay on the very surface of the process.

In exactly the same way, both mania and depression stem from one common background force, and the difference is only in the way a person reacts to it. When a big black cloud starts to cover the sky and nothing seems to matter anymore, some people succumb to it and halt all activity; others choose to run away from it in denial, putting on a tremendous buffoonery of omnipotence and invulnerability. Sooner or later they are exhausted and the cloud gets them.

That is why there is depression without mania, but there is never mania without depression. That is why the symptomatic treatment of both is bound to be inefficient. What we have to deal with is the black cloud. And to deal with our patients’, we first have to come to terms with our own…

Financial Side of Children's Bipolar Disorder

In a New York Times article it is reported that several world-famous Harvard psychiatrists have failed to disclose the bigger part of their income received from pharmaceutical companies for the last 7 years.

The research activity of these psychiatrists during this time has influenced the public and professional opinion on the problem of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents, as well as the patterns of drug prescription to the younger patients. Largely as a result of their studies it is now an accepted norm to prescribe atypical antipsychotic medications to children, for the treatment of bipolar disorder. It turns out that those studies were de facto funded by the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs in question.

The concept of pediatric bipolar disorder is controversial in itself, because a lot of symptoms that allow for this diagnosis (mood swings, rebellious behavior, sadness, appetite loss, problems in communication with peers, et cetera) may just as well be regarded as normal stages of child or teenager's development.

The credibility of the Harvard psychiatrists's research is questioned, but it is too late: the idea that children can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given antipsychotics has spread around the world. It will take years, and many thousands of children, to revert this trend.