Daniel Michael Parks — Contributor

Daniel Michael Parks offers us a first-person account of a life profoundly affected by Bipolar Disorder:

"Most textbooks on bipolar disorder have been written solely from the clinical aspects of the illnesses and only by doctors in the field who can't possibly understand my high-highs and the low-lows that I suffer from. Mine is a true and factual case study of one person's battle with mental illness and of the appalling impact it had on me during my entire lifetime. Who would know better about my symptoms and of the destructive nature of my illnesses but by one who suffers from both maladies?"

"In my adult life, bipolar illness cost me two wives. It cost me one of my sons who couldn't cope with his father's illnesses. It cost me a going optical business in New Jersey and created personal damage that I caused to those around me when I didn't understand my own mind."

"It was not until 1994, being suicidal at the time, and having no desire to live, that I had myself admitted to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Northern Kentucky. While in hospital it was the first time that I was diagnosed as being bipolar disorder. I was fifty-four years old at the time. Although I had psychotherapy since I was eight years old no psychologist had suspected that I was ill and I drifted back and forth in that netherworld of depression and mania."

"Today I am well, thanks to the new drugs that are available to me. Although my medications need to be modified every so often, I am balanced as a see-saw is balanced and I do not stray to either the depressive or the manic poles of my illness."