Category Archives: Spectrum

Depression Painting

Two Lesser-Known Forms of Bipolar Disorder: Cyclothymia and Bipolar Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified

Please do not use the following article for self-diagnosis or the diagnosis of others. Even mental health professionals cannot diagnose themselves. It is intended instead for information and to provide useful subject matter to discuss with a psychiatrist or therapist.

The distinction between bipolar I and bipolar II is confusing enough (I have written another article on that subject), but sometimes people receive even less-known diagnoses, which are “cyclothymia” and “bipolar disorder, not otherwise specified.” When people receive these diagnoses, they are often even more confused by what is going on. Continue reading

Conversation on the Beach

What’s In a Name?: Language and Mental Illness

Today, I was initially going to write my post about the definition of mental “health.” I still plan to write that post, but I realized that before I write anything about the definition of “health,” “illness” and “disease,” I needed to write something about what it means to define something at all.

As someone with a mental illness, how words are used is very important to me. It affects the way that I think about mental illness, and the way that my condition is communicated to other people. Continue reading

What Does "Bipolar" Mean?: Five Surprising Uses From Across the Internet

In order to put together this site, I need to do a lot of online searches. Most of those searches involve searching for the term “bipolar”. Along with information that I find useful for my daily news or my weekly blog, I also find something of a flotsam of other uses of the term that can be a little surprising. Since I’ve had to spend so much of my time wading through these alternative uses of the term, I figured I was entitled to get some use out of them. So, I’ve collected together these uses that are sometimes interesting, sometimes bizarre and sometimes offensive. Continue reading