A Primer on Depression and Bipolar Disorder - Introduction

Introduction

This essay is an outgrowth of ``interest groups'' on depression and bipolar disorder led by myself and my then wife Barbara at the InterMountain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Durango, Colorado in 1990 and 1991. We were surprised by the number of people who attended these groups, which we take as evidence that depression and bipolar disorder affect a far larger number of people than is commonly supposed. I have written down some of the material we discussed in those groups in the hope of being able to reach a wider audience. Unfortunately many extremely important, and often quite moving, exchanges occurred only in passing in the discussion among the participants in the groups, and were not recorded; they are lost.

But I hope that the material presented here will encourage other individuals and groups to begin to explore on their own, or together, the many dimensions of these complex illnesses, and to create their own metaphors as they struggle to understand and explain the world they live in. I have updated the original essay I wrote on the basis of 10 years additional experience with the disorder.