This article is from the Bipolar Disorder FAQ, by barry@webveranda.com (Barry Campbell) with numerous contributions by others.
Title: Receptors
Author: Richard M. Restak, M.D.
Publisher/Year: Bantam Books, NY; 1994
ISBN: NA
Comments: "The author is an M.D. who also suffers from unipolar depression.
Although he's not anti-med, he doesn't claim that medications
will solve everything either. He writes about how our
neurological receptors work and about how they affect how we
feel. Although the book is detailed, it's not so technical that
you need a PhD to understand what he's saying. He provides a history
of how the different receptors were discovered, and also discusses
how alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, heroin, cocaine, and prescription
drugs effect us. One chapter is devoted to the discovery of lithium
and discusses how it is used to treat people with manic depression."
Title: This for Remembrance; The Autobiography of Rosemary
Clooney
Author: Rosemary Clooney, with Raymond Strait
Publisher/Date: Simon & Schuster, NY, 1977
ISBN: 0-671-16976-9
Comments: Clooney is bipolar; the first three chapters detail the manic
episode which led to her hospitalization.
Title: Touched with Fire: Manic-depressive Illness and the Artistic
Temperament
Author: Kay Redfield Jamison
Publisher/Year: Free Press: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993.
ISBN: 0-0291-6030-8 (cloth) 0-060-96594-0 (paper)
Comments: A look at a number of 19th century poets, writers, and
composers who were bipolar. Comment by Dr. James D. Watson,
Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Novel laureate
and author of The Double Helix: "An emphatic analysis of
the creativity that emerges from a little madness and the
horror from too much." Highly recommended.
Title: True North: A Memoir
Author: Jill Ker Conway
Publisher/Year: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-42099-1
Comments: A memoir that includes, in part, her learning to cope with
her husband's manic-depressive disorder.
Title: Understanding Depression
Author: Donald Klein, M.D., and Paul Wender, M.D. (founders of the
National Assn. for Depressive Illness)
Publisher/Year: Oxford; 1993
ISBN: 0-195-08669-4
Comments: Melvin Sabshin, M.D., Medical Director, American Psychiatric
Assn. writes: "A very good source of information that will
be extraordinarily useful to patients and their families."
Title: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
Author: Kay Jamison
Publisher/Year: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-44374-6
Comments: Kay Jamison's autobiography. Jamison, a renowned and respected
researcher in the field of manic depression, is bipolar. This
small book is easily readable and recommended.
 
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