Living With Bipolar

Living with Bipolar is never easy but there are ways to have a good life and deal with the illness. This episode focuses on the book One In One Hundred, Living With Bipolar by Lorna Mabry and her husband Pete Smart.

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Welcome to this edition of Newsgram.

According to the National Health Service in England 1 in every 100 people will be diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder at some point in their life and it does not discriminate. It seems an equal number of men and women develop the illness and it is found in all ages, races, ethnic groups and social classes.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, here in the US, 5.7 million Americans are diagnosed every year. And according to the Harvard Medical School, that’s 2.8% of the entire United States population.

All that being said, the least we can do is pay a little attention to it on this edition of Newsgram and a great way to do that is to introduce you to Peter Smart. On June 26th 2020 while the world was reeling with a global pandemic Peter lost his wife to cancer.

Peter Smart – The worst day of my entire life.

He is now releasing a book called One In One Hundred, Living With Bipolar written by his late wife Lorna Mabry who originally wrote it to help other people living with bipolar disorder.

Peter Smart – Lorna started researching it in 2011 and it was surprising how much research she actually did. She used to work on it for hours and hours and hours.Sometimes till six in the morning still looking something up on the internet. So she’d print information off or write information down, read lots of books and then all through the book she sent illustrated by using examples from her own illness and treatment. That was about a two year job and then we started typing it. That was even longer and unfortunately our computer crashed so it had to wait. And then in early January 2020 Lorna had gone to the Doctors about pain in her mouth, lumps in her throat . Eventually then we got sent to see a specialist and he told Lorna that it was actually tongue cancer and secondary cancers in the mouth, neck and throat but then Covid really hit Leicester at that time. March 2020 Leicester was the Covid capital of the country and so her operation got cancelled.

The Covid virus has had so many implications that it’s going to take years to sort them all out. Fortunately Lorna and Peter were able to save her research and release it to help others. One In One Hundred, was written by someone with first had experience with Bi Polar Disorder – so it’s easy to understand and relate to. In addition to some useful information, you also get some insight into Lorna as a person and I think it’s that human element that sets this book apart. In it she writes….

Peter Smart – Each day is a challenge and its difficult for me. Some people who suffer from this illness don’t have many good days but just experience bad days. I am more positive and confident about everyday life whereas when I was down I was really negative. When I first got sick in December 1999 I was more or less in a hopeless state, however this is nobody’s fault and it was just a freak of nature. I don’t get many manic episodes now, only when I sing. I get very elated, high and I can’t seem to come down to earth. Apart from suffering from depression I also suffer from panic attacks mainly when I go out which isn’t very often. My GPS prescribed me Propranolol which seems to suit and I carry this tablet wherever I go.

The book is part self-help book for people with Mental Health Issues – beginning with diagnosis, treatment, hospital stays, recovery and how to improve your own Mental Health and stay well.

Peter Smart – A better understanding of Bi-Polar. what you can do to help yourself which is what lorna was really focused on. So a lot of the chapters, two to eleven, areLorna’s ideas on how to help yourself. Like I say, making sure you get the right treatment. making sure you take medication, probably join a support group, meet or talk to people that have got a similar illness, this sort of thing. Try to eat healthily, try to sleep, try to exercise, all those sort of sensible things to make you healthy both mentally and physically because a lot of people who experience poor mental health also experience poor physical health as a knock-on effect. If you’re not gonna go out you’re not gonna get exercise. If you’re gonna get exercise you’re not gonna be fit. You might put weight on. It can have a knock-on effect.

There are also some first-hand experiences; short stories and poems by Lorna, her husband Pete, and their daughter Lydia. Like this one found on page 93.

Peter Smart – This is one of Lorna’s “Am I going Mad”…is the title of the poem. The thoughts within my brain are driving me insane. The thoughts inside my head have almost gone dead. My brain feels empty like a sieve. This is how I live. A chemical imbalance makes me think wrong thoughts. I misbehaved. I’m out of sorts. I am guilty of no crime just ill and sectioned for a time i was diagnosed with postnatal depression however this wasn’t true. The quacks got it all wrong like they sometimes do. I was misdiagnosed there’s no doubt. I have bipolar which affects the mind, it’s the part of me that I have declined. I’m up one minute and down the next. My mood swings vary and I get depressed. I tell you one thing that keeps me sane, it’s doing crosswords that help my brain.

The New York Times will love that. A prescription of crossword puzzles to keep you mentally healthy. Can’t argue with that.

In closing I would like to leave you with some humbling advice from someone that has had to deal with more adversity than the average person.

Peter Smart – Never give up. Lorna, the late author, never gave up. She had bipolar for twenty years including several hospital stays and she called it a monster of an illness but during recovery and managing her bipolar she’s managed to write two books so she’s proved that you can do it. So three short words describing this would be patience, resilience and hope.

And…never give up.

The book is called One In One Hundred, Living With Bipolar

by Lorna Mabry. If it gives you some additional comfort they point out in the book a number of celebrities that have been diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder and some of them may come as a surprise to you some not so much. Celebrities like Carrie Fischer…

Peter Smart – Kurt Cobain, Vivian Leigh famous for Gone with the Wind and being married to Lawrence Olivier. The American poet Sylvia Platt and uh, the English humorist, writer , director actor everything Steven Frye, he’s got Bipolar and a brief heavyweight boxing champion called frank Bruno from the U.K he managed to win the world title so it’s not a totally isolating illness or you shouldn’t feel isolated with it because and as book says one in one hundred are expected to have bipolar at some stage that’s quite a lot of people when you think about how many people there are in the world.

The family will be donating a third of the profits (after paying the taxes) to leading charities focused on support for Mental Health and Cancer.

It’s available all over the internet including some of the more popular places like Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com and we’ve put links to all of them in the show’s description. And that will do it for another edition of Newsgram from Webtalkradio.com.

Listen to an interview with Peter Smart on the Books on Air podcast. 

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