Jayson Blair

By Jayson Blair, Certified Life Coach The importance of a good diagnosis has become even clearer as pharmaceutical companies have further refined their biological silver bullets for mental illness. Medicines like, for example, serotonin reuptake inhibitors can be targeted to treat depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and a variety of other illness. But they can have dramatically harmful effects on those with bipolar disorder. All things considered, its amazing that doctors are not more attentive to the symptoms faced by their clients. But increasing demands of the economy and insurance companies have made it harder, to potentially devastating consequences, for psychiatrists and psychologists to effectively diagnosis. Increasingly it is fallen on clients to rapidly self-report symptoms in 15-minute to 30-minute initial evaluations and then the question of diagnosis never return. In the best practices of the profession, diagnosis is thoroughly evaluated and constantly re-evaluated. ...

Traveling to classrooms at colleges and universities to talk about ethics, deception, substance abuse, mental health and a variety of other topics, has a redemptive quality for me. But as satisfying as it is to help see good come from my mistakes in the form of lessons learned, it has always been the human story that has captured me. As I give of myself, others give their stories back to me, enlightening me, expanding my base of knowledge, transforming me. These stories are all around us on a daily basis. Sharing can make it easier for others to share with you, but the key to formula here is as simple as can be, and involves nothing more than actually listening as opposed to merely hearing. I have learned that many people have stories that are similar to my own. The main difference is that my fall from grace and redemption play out on a large, public stage. For most, these are stories are only known to their families and friends, and, in some cases, stories that they carry alone, quie...

Our office manager is playing the lead role in a local production by the Sterling Playmakers ' of " Thoroughy Modern Millie ," a Tony-award winning musical comedy that was on Broadway in the early 2000s. I went to see it on Sunday with a client and saw several others there, a testament to our office manager's loyal following, which I attribute to her ability to relate to our unique population of clients. You can take that wherever you want. I see no need to complete the thought and connect the dots, but, in the best ways, they broke the mold when they made her. The cast and crew of the play did a wonderful job and this morning I was talking to our office manager, who did an exceptional job playing Millie, about the behind-the-scenes romances, conflict and otherwise general insanity related to the cast and crew. As I told her, "there is a reason they call it drama." Anyway, the entire conversation made me think of the link between mental illness and creati...

My first psychiatrist in New York warned me not to become "a professional patient." In the midst of news reports about me I had been approached by all sorts of people, including pharmaceutical companies whose medications I had not yet taken, to speak on their behalf with partially made-up narratives of a recovery that had not yet happened. Andy Behrman is the most high-profile bipolar "professional patient" out in the world of bipolar. I met Andy in late September 2007 after my friend Moira, at board member of Depression Bipolar Alliance-National Capital , introduced me to him and we arranged for him to come speak to all the DBSA groups in Washington and Baltimore. The event was sponsored by DBSA-NCA and the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance-Northern Virginia . I was being filmed that day by Samantha Grant, a documentary producer, and her crew from GUSH Productions, so the entire event was recorded. I can't bring myself to ask Sam for a copy of the recording, ...