Well, I'm working on the questionnare, I can post it or email it to anyone who thinks it would be useful.

But the basic information. I've had problems with severe depressive episodes for as long as I can remember (I'm 30 now). I was officially diagnosed as bipolar a couple of years ago. My manic phases usually take the form of "mixed" episodes... that is, I'm hyped up but my emotional state is still negative... and I'm a rapid cycler... that is, my mood swings can happen very quickly.

I also have an anxiety disorder that makes dealing with people and certain situations acutely intimidating, and I've been told that it borders on agoraphobia. I have panic attacks at times.

Currently I'm at a point where I can't work, and I'm on disability. I get my medication through the county mental health department. I'm on a mood stabilizer, two antidepressants, an antianxiety medication, and a benzodiazepene.

I'm hesitant to even contemplate going off my medications, because I've attempted suicide in the past before I was on meds, and even on meds I self-injure at times. My worst ever SI episode occured when I'd been unable to get my mood stabilizer presecription refilled and was off it for about a month.

I see a therapist (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) in addition to my medications, she's commented on a couple of occasions that my intelligence is a liability at times, because I'm always thinking ahead (and of course drawing negative conclusions) and it makes some of the standard CBT exercises less effective.

Anyway, I know I am rambling but my question basically is... what should I do?

I have seen probably half a dozen cases of Bipolar, and have cured one of those. The only reason I was able to cure him was that he trusted me, reduced and then abandoned his medicaton, and came to me during the worst of his episodes, so that I could really understand what was going on for him. This was a harrowing experience for both of us. However, he has been free of medication and symptoms for over 5 years now. He can hold down a normal job and finds it hard to remember what it was like to be mentally ill. We had to treat the manic stage first (with Cann-i) and then the depressive stage (Thuja). It seems the depression was the initial part of the disease, the mania came later. He needed only one dose of the cannabis, and only two doses of Thuja (at suffiently high potencies).

The other cases did not stick with me - they would come once or twice, only came during their manic stage, and were heavily medicated.

This doesn't really allow me to say how well homoeopathy can deal with bipolar, but this one case alone suggests there is hope.

__________________
David Kempson.<br />Dip.Homoeopathic Medicine.<br />Lecturer Australian College of Natural Therapies (Brisbane Campus)<br />Member AHA, AROH, HMA<br />Member Australian Homoeopathic Association. Member#0442.

atlanta,

you can get maximum info through serach engine. See above and search your requisite information at HHBB.

However you can send info to me regarding questionaire.

I'm glad you're filling out the questionnaire, for without it we really can't help you. Feel free to post your answers here, or email them privately to a choice of practitioners you might have, either way, I'm sure you'll get help.

The questionnaire is long, but has to be in order for us to get beneath the clinical diagnosis. Please feel free to give as much information as you can, as brief answers are likely to lead to a poor understanding of your case.

Thanks,
Snoopy

Dear A. P.

I would urge you to consider homeopathy as your first choice for your treatment, while bearing in mind that your problems are complex and long-standing and may not respond to homeopathy instantly. Even if initial efforts are unsuccessful, leading to the pursuit of other options (some of which I detail below), always return to homeopathy as if you were a homing pigeon, make it your home base, your point of origin. Having said that, please allow me a fairly lengthy digression, which I make because of the likelihood that your treatment may prove to be difficult:

Medication. DO NOT DISCONTINUE medication until you determine, in conjunction with your homeopath, therapist, or psychiatrist, that it is a good time to experiment weaning yourself from it. BEAR IN MIND that if you begin weaning from your meds, and then find yourself experiencing an emotional crisis, it may be necessary to resume your medications again immediately. Try to remember that any such crisis can in all likelihood be remedied by resuming the medications. And don’t burden yourself with the assumption that the medications are hindering your homeopathic treatment: instead, remember that they are helping to maintain your psychological balance while homeopathy begins the process of cure. Once enough progress has been made, will be time enough to start weaning from the meds again.

Therapy. Therapy with MDI is a very difficult process and probably not the preferred treatment. Among therapies, CBT is not the most desirable therapy for this type of problem: essentially, CBT is helping you control your symptoms, but I would advise you that you do not want to control your symptoms, you want them to go away, so that you don’t have to control them because they aren’t there anymore. CBT will not do this. CBT will essentially help you control (suppress) symptoms, which may be helpful, just as medications are helpful, for purposes of stabilization. But wean yourself from these artificial strategies as soon as you are able to, just as you will wean yourself from your medications.

You might try a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic/supportive psychotherapy. In these therapies, symptom removal is really only a by-product of therapy; the primary goal of such therapies is understanding, and as understanding progresses, patients find that their symptoms “just go away.” Patients will commonly say, “You know, I’ve noticed I’m not (depressed, anxious…whatever) anymore.” Such therapies also have a hard time with MDI, but they can be most beneficial as an adjunct to good homeopathic (or other naturalistic) treatments.

Exciting and maintaining causes. Homeopaths don’t seem to like to hear this, but even Hahnemann said to eliminate exciting and maintaining causes of pathology before embarking on homeopathic treatment. And, since we are all individuals with individual sensitivities, I would strongly urge you to explore a range of common factors that cause or maintain symptoms. These causes include:

1. if you have mercury amalgam fillings, have them removed;
2. I would experiment with my diet, to see if any specific foods or food groups are contributing an unusual proportion to your problems; rotate the following diets, and continue on the diets indefinitely if you notice any significant improvement in your sense of well-being:
a. eliminate all dairy products, milk and eggs and everything made with them (including lactose, caseine, and whey); give it one to two weeks;
b. eliminate corn (including corn syrup found in pop and other products, corn starch, etc); give it a week;
c. eliminate wheat, barley, rye, and oats; give it a month
d. on principle, eliminate sugar, aspartame, and as many food colorings as you can; increase fresh fruit consumption;
e. eat only organic foods for a week
3. note any reactions to EMFs – I have had 4 patients in my practice who experienced sleep disorders that were cured by removing large screen television sets from their bedrooms (actually, one patient was a child who slept well in his own room, but poorly in the basement where he liked to fall asleep while watching TV).
4. use filtered water
5. use cotton blankets and pillows instead of synthetic fibres.

If your homeopathic treatment reaches a definite impasse, try other naturalistic treatments such as colonics, deep tissue massage, reiki, acupuncture, etc etc. A decision to vary from classical homeopathic treatment should be made on the basis of suffering and time: if your suffering is too great, give yourself a break, use supportive measures as needed to get through it; if treatment is taking too much time, and appears too uncertain in its progress, use supportive or palliative measures to provide a measure of progress and relief now. This is necessary to enhance your quality of life as much as possible; but in addition, even palliative or other supportive treatments may improve the quality of your health enough that it makes you that much more accessible to homeopathic intervention: this is the idea behind the removal of exciting and maintaining causes.

The success of homeopathy varies from case to case—and the variation exactly parallels experience with other forms of treatment, whether psychotherapy, colonics, removal of mercury fillings, etc: some people are cured almost miraculously after one or perhaps a few treatments, others seem not to respond at all. All treatment methods have their share of “miracle cures” and their fair share of “failures.” It is not uncommon to find that people require intervention from a number of different fronts before they show improvement. In homeopathy, at one end of the spectrum we find cases cured by a single dose of the similimum; at the other end of the spectrum we find cases that are termed “incurable.” In between are cases that improve a great deal or a little bit with from a few to many doses of a single remedy or a series of remedies. The reason to make homeopathy the preferred treatment out of all possible treatments, is that it has the ability to "cover" the full range of symptoms, to treat, through the similimum, the whole person rather than a single system, cluster of symptoms, or pathogenic source.

Give homeopathy 6 months to get started; if there is any progress at all, continue. Be very reluctant to interrupt homeopathic treatment. If a year or two years go by and progress remains too minimal or is interrupted, try some alternative interventions, such as massage, colonics, etc—homeopaths on this BB, please comment or correct these time expectations; for my part, I present these as guidelines only, to be evaluated carefully by yourself in conjunction with your homeopath as treatment progresses.

I’d be glad to also respond to any questions you may have on any of this, and am interested in receiving copies of any email you exchange with other practitioners and to contribute to your case as the situation seems to warrant.

Best wishes to you,

Bach

[ 22. December 2002, 20:56: Message edited by: bwv11 ]

__________________
"The need to perform adjustments for covariates...weakens the findings." BMJ Clinical Evidence: Mental Health, (No. 11), p. 95.... It's that simple, guys: bad numbers make bad science.

Well Bach seems to have said it all.

Cases like yours can be a bit difficult, as David Kempson said, but certainly can be helped, so don't lose hope.
A lot will depend on your persistence with the treatment.

All the best.
doctorleela

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http://www.homeopathy2health.com

Hi Bach and Dr. Leela,

Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to add, in homeopathy, the most horrible afflictions can be easy cases when the patient totally matches a remedy! I recently had a case that was diagnosed as Bi-polar, but it was a clear Nux Vomica case, a textbook case, and the patient responded within days to my usual 12C Rx in water with succussions once a day. So, I would encourage the person who wrote in to fill out our questionnaire and not to think that such a case is beyond homeopathy.

Snoopy

Dear Snoopy -

Happy holidays back to you!

Thank you for adding your clear and direct message. I'm afraid my own optimism for results from homeopathic intervention may have gotten lost in the detail I poured out, and am glad you, and Dr. Leela, brought it back to clarify a couple of key points, perseverance for one, and the fact that alternative medicine, especially homeopathy, offers the hope for improvement of a quality and scope that can not be approached by traditional medicine. I hope Atalanta wasn't scared off by my 'lecture,' and is still checking in and sees your posts.

Bach

__________________
"The need to perform adjustments for covariates...weakens the findings." BMJ Clinical Evidence: Mental Health, (No. 11), p. 95.... It's that simple, guys: bad numbers make bad science.

A wonderful Christmas Season and Happy New Year Snoops... Quite a lot has happened this year hasn't it? I'm sure the next year will be great though.

Leela

__________________
http://www.homeopathy2health.com

Thanks Dr. Leela! I sure hope you're right!
I'll begin by letting Bach off easy with only one demerit for Information Overload!

Talk to you again soon,
Snoopy