Gum on My Shoe

World Bipolar Day is celebrated each year on March 30, the birthday of painter Vincent Van Gogh who is thought to have lived with a bipolar condition. To mark the occasion our books will be available to download free from March 29 through April 2. Details will be posted here on our blog on March 28. Check back, follow our social media, or subscribe to our blog so you don’t miss out. The theme for World Bipolar Day 2026 is Bipolar Strong. I want to take the opportunity to explore what those words means to me as a friend and ally. I have no first-hand experience of living with a mental health condition. Everything I know about mental illness in general and bipolar disorder in particular is second-hand. It’s based on books I’ve read and courses I’ve taken, including Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST). Most of all it’s based on what I’ve learned from friends who know only too well what it means to live with illness. I would never ...

By Charity Megan Riley The following is taken from the introduction to my 2025 novel Bipolar Dreamer . In the late 1990s, many young women wanted to be Felicity Porter, a character on a TV show called Felicity , which aired from fall 1998 until spring 2002. The pilot episode reveals a socially awkward, intelligent girl named Felicity, in Palo Alto, California, asking her high school crush, Ben, to sign her yearbook. He writes a note saying that although he never got to know her, he always wondered what she was about and he admired her. After she reads his message, she changes her college plans. The main character in Bipolar Dreamer , Phoebe, is part Felicity — the hopeless romantic part — but she is mostly me. Like me, she is a big fan of the show Felicity and dreams to have the life of the star character — to be on her own, far away from home, and to be doted on by several young men. She is smart but suffers from problems she can’t clearly define. Phoebe’s stressors are main...

You don’t need to do this perfectly. You just need to keep choosing yourself often enough that life remains liveable. That’s the work. And you’re already doing it. — Cheryl Stott I recently shared my thoughts inspired by William Styron’s “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.” Since then I’ve been reading a very different yet no less engaging book on mental health. Living with Bipolar and other mood disorders by Cheryl Stott was published in paperback on January 26 this year. This review is based on the Kindle edition which came out a few days later. I was immediately drawn to the clean presentation of the text. There’s little to get in the way of the content itself. This is in keeping with the author’s aim to help people newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder understand what their diagnosis means — and what it doesn’t mean. Living with Bipolar is not a clinical manual and it’s not a Memoir. It’s the conversation many people never get when they are diagnosed. This Extended E...

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the almost fourteen years we’ve been friends, it’s that living with bipolar disorder isn’t a one day at the end of March thing. It’s an every day of every month thing. Dear Fran. It’s World Bipolar Day in a few days, and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. This letter is my gift to you. For World Bipolar Day, yes. But really for each and every day. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the almost fourteen years we’ve been friends, it’s that living with bipolar disorder isn’t a one day at the end of March thing. It’s an every day of every month thing. That’s something not everyone realises. There are reasons for that. You have better days and worse days, and are more likely to engage with other people on your better days. You choose not to share everything with everyone all the time. It’s also true that the impacts of illness on your life are not equally obvious to others. As well as bipolar you live with chronic fatigue ...

... at the beginning where I was doing it every day like clockwork, it entirely carried me out of that low spot, and I believe that it saved my life. — Ellis Ducharme Fran and I recently shared our experiences visiting the Portland Museum of Art and the Laing Art Gallery here in Newcastle upon Tyne. Continuing the Art of Friendship theme, we’re delighted to showcase photographer and videographer Ellis Ducharme, whose exhibition Six Feet Above showed through June at the Peaks Island library in Maine. The website described Six Feet Above as “a collection of thirty-six photos from a personal project to fight depression and raise awareness of mental health. Ocean themes and many cityscapes focus on finding beauty in places most deem undesirable and ugly.” Fran lived on Peaks Island for many years. Although I’ve never visited in person, I feel a great affection for the island as Fran’s shared so much of it with me. She still visits regularly and attended several of this year’...

To mark World Bipolar Day 2024 Fran and I are offering our books for FREE on Kindle for five days between Friday March 29 and Tuesday April 2, inclusive. In High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder we share what we’ve learned about growing a supportive, mutually rewarding friendship between a “well one” and an “ill one.” With no-nonsense advice from the caring friend’s point of view, original approaches and practical tips, illustrated with real-life conversations and examples. Buy it here . Friendship is a beautiful part of life and an important component of long-term wellness. No One Is Too Far Away: Notes from a Transatlantic Friendship is a collection of articles from our blog which shows that mental illness needn’t be a barrier to meaningful connection; indeed it can be the glue that holds people together. Buy it here . Once the free offer is over the prices will go back to normal. World Bipolar Day is celebrated each year on March 3...

By Fran Houston Sometimes I wake up. Sometimes not. I hold onto the bed for dear life. I am familiar with the night and its darkness. As a child I lived in the basement of our house as a mole does in his tunnel and could navigate through the narrow path of jagged, stacked boxes to the bathroom in the dark. The lights didn’t work. Wrapped in my blanket of night, I am safe and warm. In the night are dreams. Dreams of all the things that can’t be done in my body because of its restrictions of fatigue and pain. I indulge my soul’s longing to fly. The day hurts my eyes with its stinging brightness. Music hurts my ears with its loudness and overstimulation. I like the quiet of night. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and bipolar disorder. They operate as independent sine waves. At any time, I can be exhausted and manic, energized and depressed. Every combination imaginable. The cycles can last for days or months or even years. It’s an odd assortment. I had a mate. I ha...

By Eric Russell I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to Martin Baker for allowing me this opportunity to share my experience with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). His book, High Tide, Low Tide , focuses on the intersection of mental health and relationships. So here I come down a side street to narrate my journey along the ECT path. I have bipolar disorder. After all the medications I tried failed to calm the episodes and manage the symptoms my doctor asked if I were ready to discuss ECT. She explained that while medications have a success rate of 30-35%, ECT sees a roughly 80% efficacy rate in academic studies. However, at that moment I was too nervous to hear the favourable comparison. Although I was afraid of the unknown, my doctor convinced me to educate myself and make a fully informed decision. In the end I opted in. As a part of the preparation my primary care physician had to sign off that I was physically healthy enough to undergo ECT. ...

To mark World Bipolar Day 2023 Fran and I are offering our books for FREE on Kindle for five days between Wednesday March 29 and Sunday April 2, inclusive. In High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder we share what we’ve learned about growing a supportive, mutually rewarding friendship between a “well one” and an “ill one.” With no-nonsense advice from the caring friend’s point of view, original approaches and practical tips, illustrated with real-life conversations and examples. Buy it here . Friendship is a beautiful part of life and an important component of long-term wellness. No One Is Too Far Away: Notes from a Transatlantic Friendship is a collection of articles from our blog which shows that mental illness needn’t be a barrier to meaningful connection; indeed it can be the glue that holds people together. Buy it here . Once the free offer is over the prices will go back to normal. World Bipolar Day is celebrated each year on March...

Talking about mental health can be difficult and I wrote recently about some of the reasons we may not want to . Part of the problem can be that we lack the words to adequately describe what’s going on for us when we’re struggling. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I completed a Mental Health First Aid Refresher course. The training covered several models of mental health and wellbeing, including the mental health continuum and stress container (or stress bucket). Models such as these can never completely describe the personal and often subtle details of what we’re going through, but they can provide a starting point and some common language with which to explore and share our feelings. In this article I’ll cover a number of models I find helpful when talking about mental health, plus two relating to supportive friendships. The Stress Bucket Also known as the stress container this model was originally developed in 2002 by Professor Alison Brabban and Dr Dougl...

By Christine Roberts My first “visit” to a mental hospital was when I was seventeen and a half years old. I didn’t know then, but I was experiencing my first bipolar mania/manic episode. I had noticed something different about me when I was about thirteen, but couldn’t put my finger on it until much later on down the road. I was unaware for years and years of further “visits” to mental hospitals, numerous doctors, nurses, and medications. I finally got a diagnosis of something called Bipolar Disorder / Manic Phase when I was thirty-four or thirty-five. I was so glad that there was finally a name to what was going on in my whole life pretty much to that point. My latest diagnosis as of about sixty-four is Bipolar Disorder I with psychotic features. These include delusions, hallucinations, hypomania, and such during the mania/manic episodes. Now I had a name, but didn’t really know what that meant until my case manager at the time explained it to me with an illustration. I ...

It’s easier to be there for someone if you understand what they’re going through. But how can you understand if you’ve never been there yourself ? That’s the situation I found myself in when I met my best friend Fran for the first time in 2011. Fran lives with three chronic health conditions I’d never experienced and knew nothing about: bipolar disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME), and fibromyalgia. Being her friend didn’t mean I had to become an expert in any of these but I wanted to learn as much as I could, so I could be there for her as effectively as possible. I’m sharing my education journey in the hope it might help someone in a similar position. I’ll focus on bipolar disorder but the principles apply no matter what mental or physical health condition your friend or loved one lives with. It’s also relevant to other lived experience including abuse, bereavement, discrimination, self-harm, stigma, suicidality, or trauma. Whatever your friend’s situation, appr...