Mary Beth Smith releases new book Healing Manic Depression and Depression

COCOA, Fla. - Aug. 14, 2013 - PRLog -- After unbearable pressure at home and at work, the author became manic and crashed her car into a tree thinking she would become reincarnated.  After going to an incompetent psychiatrist,  she had the enormous good luck to switch to the best psychiatrist in the county.  Here she tells her own story along with chapters on what bipolar disorder is, how cognitive therapy helps  and how 12 step programs with their emphasis on a spiritual experience help.

  Bipolar disorder includes recurrent depression, bipolar I, bipolar II and bipolar NOS (not otherwise specified).  The chapter on bipolar disorder contains explanations of why only middle and upper class families have it, proof that it is genetic, that it sometimes causes great creativity  but sometimes causes a decrease in IQ even though the person was born with a higher IQ than average.

  12 step programs work because of their emphasis on giving up control to a higher power.  This eventually results in a  spiritual experience and causes change.  Cognitive therapy helps a person to change their incorrect thinking in order to change their mood.  A person must examine their thoughts whenever an unhealthy thought occurs to them, making them depressed or worried.  They must look at the reality of the situation and change their thinking.  Mental health is described by M. Scott Peck as "dedication to reality at all costs."   

The author further describes what mental health is and what self-actualization is, based on examples from Lincoln's life and Abraham Maslow's book Motivation and Personality. The author states that a person's neuroses and narcissism can be healed.  But once healed, the bipolar person still needs medication in the same way a person with diabetes needs insulin.