Product Of The Seventies » work

Memory Fading

Jon — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:31:48 +0000

It wasn’t that long ago I was blogging every day. Weighty topics, sometimes multiple times a day. On top of a personal blog I was blogging for a major online health website. But lately, it seems my memory won’t allow it. I get an idea I’d like to cover, think out the angles, and completely lose it 15 minutes later. This isn’t uncommon, I’ve had to write down ideas all my life. But now I’m talking literally minutes. Before I have a chance to write it down. I don’t know if it’s age, psych meds, or that I’m a product of the seventies. Hopefully it’s not early onset Alzheimers. But I don’t know how long I’ll be able to work at the level I am now. Hopefully we can pay down some debt and refinance the house before I find myself in that boat.

It’s a nerve-wracking scenario, and it scares me. But then I forget to be nervous…

The Hidden Business Cost of Mental Illness

Jon — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:14:19 +0000

The Hidden Business Cost of Mental Illness – BusinessWeek.

Here’s an excellent article on the impact of mental health issues in the workplace.

It’s hard to focus on your work when your child is hallucinating.

I’ve experienced this so many times – “please come home, he’s very manic and throwing things around…”

This stigma extends beyond those directly stricken to family members. Parents of children with mental illness are often viewed as guilty by association, unfairly perceived as the cause of the illness—the source of harmful child-rearing practices—when the origin is mainly biological. Parents and other family members feel shame and a sense of failure.

Nobody knows this better than my wife and I. Having lost our adult son to issues associated with bipolar disorder, we tried everything, and heard every piece of advice when he was growing up.

This is a very real problem, but I don’t see any significant changes being made in attitude or workplace policies.

Bipolar Mania

Jon — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:15:37 +0000

I’m starting to feel that, as with everything in life, there is a reason for mania. My hypo-manic mind gets to the point where I can figure out anything. Deep, relevant, important answers to problems. If my wife would let me I could take apart anything, and assemble back in better shape than when it was originally. Most of the time. There’s been a few things over the years that doesn’t go back together, so she keeps me away from most things. But when my mind moves from hypo-mania to mania, as it does for some of us, it’s not a pleasant prospect. The definition of mania is psychosis, or losing the ability to know you’re manic. When this happens, sleep suffers radically. I sleep 3 to 4 hours a night, almost entirely dependent on sleeping pills to even begin to put me down.

But the initial point of this post: When manic, sleep goes away. When sleep goes away the mind loses it’s ability to process as much. The less active mind is therapeutic for the mania. So once again, a reason for everything.