The World of Bipolar Disorder

Welcome to my world, Manic Moments: A Bipolar's World. My name is Gregory Kuhn and I started this website on April of 1999 during one of my manic moments...hence the namesake. I was diagnosed in 1995 as having Bipolar Disorder I. During the following years of treatment and therapy I started feeling relief that my messed up life was not just due to my own stupidty or failure as a human being. Knowing why I behave like I do and why I always felt out-of-place in the world was a huge relief for me. Still I felt out-of-place and once I got a computer and Internet access I started doing some seeking for others like myself.

I found that there are a lot of people who share this illness and that there are a lot of resources available on the WWW for this illness. After awhile I got to thinking about starting my own website about Bipolar Disorder. Over the years this website has undergone many changes. A lot of the stuff from the early years is gone (lost during a severe manic period where I got depressed and deleted a ton of files with no backups...doh!). I keep searching all of my hard drives and maybe someday I will get lucky and find a backup of those lost files. It is my hope to create and maintain a place where others feel safe to express their thoughts and fears and to share experiences and information with others.

Having Bipolar Disorder does not mean that life is over. In some ways Bipolar Disorder has benefits. Many people who have Bipolar Disorder are creative, have a high level of intelligence and sensitivity to the feelings of others...and we have some great company;

Buzz Aldrin, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ted Turner, Ned Beatty, Ernest Hemingway, Abbie Hoffman, Robert Boorstin, Charley Pride, Virginia Woolf, Francis Ford Coppola are just a few of the many famous personalities with Bipolar Disorder. Another example of the Bipolar Mind is this website. I never went to school to learn about computers, rather I experiment with them and teach myself how to do things, like programming this database driven website...okay, I'll stop bragging...seriously though, a lot of people with Bipolar Disorder have a huge amount of talent, yet so many of us are discarded by society because it does not know who to deal with us...too bad...great loss.

The Ways of Bipolar Disorder

Episodes of mania and depression typically recur throughout a person's lifetime. Between the episodes, most people with Bipolar Disorder are to some degree free of symptoms. It is estimated 33% of the people diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder display residual symptoms, and about 1% experience chronic unremitting symptoms despite treatment...those numbers have probably increased since the last time I researched this.

The good news is that people with Bipolar Disorder can and do lead healthy and productive lives when the illness is effectively treated. The bad news is that without treatment, the effects of Bipolar Disorder will generally worsen. Over time the patient may suffer more frequent (rapid-cycling) and severe manic (hypomanic) and depressive (major-depressive) episodes than those experienced when the illness first appeared. In most cases, proper treatment can help reduce the frequency and severity of episodes and can help people with bipolar disorder maintain good quality of life.