Learning from Writers with Bipolar: Educational Strategies Lauren Dipaula Towson University, Towson, MD

Language Arts Journal of Michigan Volume 25 Article 5 Issue 2 Difference 2010 Learning from Writers with Bipolar: Educational Strategies Lauren DiPaula Towson University, Towson, MD Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/lajm Recommended Citation DiPaula, Lauren (2010) "Learning from Writers with Bipolar: Educational Strategies," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 25: Iss. 2, Article 5. Available at: https://doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.1072 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Language Arts Journal of Michigan by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. their illnesses, and their self-perceptions as writers Learning from Writers during bipolar episodes and while not. Over a period ofthree years, I conducted thirty-four hours ofin-depth with Bipolar: interviews and analyzed 585 pages of transcripts. Educational Strategies The results of my study are meant to contribute to a better understanding of twenty-one lives that are Lauren DiPaula deeply affected by this illness and to broaden our Towson University understanding ofwriting processes and practices. Towson, MD Interviews with Writers with Bipolar Disorder There are four main ways writing teachers tend to For the purposes of the study, I defined "writer" talk about mental illness and writing. We talk about as a person who writes on his or her own time, by encouraging writing to heal, about dealing with his or her own choice. I chose those who consider disturbing writing, about celebrating the creative themselves writers over students on the belief that impulses that come with some mental illnesses , and such participants would likely be more aware of we talk, however rarely, about educating ourselves as how their writing practices and processes were teachers as to the unique processes such students bring affected by their illnesses. As writers, four of the to the English classroom and as to the challenges they twenty-one were professional writers, those who face once there. wrote for their livelihood. Two of those four wrote One such discussion ofthe challenges students fiction, a third was a technical writer, and a fourth with mental illness face is in Susan A. Gardner's 2003 wrote for freelance projects as well as occasionally article in English Journal. Gardner writes that we taught a course on writing/publishing. Although often do not recognize the challenges of the depressed only four were professional writers, others' works student in the classroom and that such students tend to had been published in collections on mental illness , "fall through the cracks" (29). She says that teachers in psychiatric journals, in newspapers in the form of who are properly educated on depression can help letters to the editor and editorials, and/or in blogs. students with the illness continue to learn; that is, they Another-a woman in her early thirties-had written can make accommodations so that students continue her own memoir of her struggle with the illness. to learn. She recommends that, "when we work Participants were found through advertisements with depressed students, we need to begin thinking on listservs, in magazines, as well as through my seriously about adjusting our requirements ....We need attendance at support groups when admitted. (I am to take a hard, honest look at our assignments and what most indebted to the local affiliate of the grassroots might be necessary to complete, given the medical National Alliance on Mental Illness [NAMI] for its circumstances, so that students can be assessed support.) Participant identities are protected here fairly" (32). Gardner's suggestions include creating through the use of pseudonyms. All participants were a supportive classroom, providing different kinds of under the care ofa doctor or therapist, as I had specified assignments, and, I think most importantly, asking for in the participation criteria. Some were experiencing more education on depression. episodes at the time of the interviews, and all were In order to better understand what writers face experiencing some effects-positive and negative--of when they experience another mental illness-bipolar treatments such as medication and electroconvulsive disorder, I interviewed twenty-one writers who suffer therapy (ECT), which I will briefly describe below. from the illness. I asked these writers about those writing practices and processes, their literacy journeys, My study was a qualitative, naturalistic study Spring/Summer 2010 18 based on grounded theory; that is, rather than creating a culture, race, gender, class, and ethnicity. The illness is hypothesis and testing it, I allowed theory to emerge from marked by changes in things such as emotion, perception, the data. This is best illustrated in the evolution of my behavior, energy, eating and sleeping patterns, and questions. Although I began with a set offlexible interview cognition, changes that have distinct starting and stopping questions, I continually revised and expanded them as the points in time. The interval between one cluster ofchanges study went on based on the data I was collecting and the and either another cluster ofchanges or normalcy is known pertinent literature I was reviewing. Often, too, I would as an episode. Currently, there are three widely-recognized go back and ask new questions to participants I had major episodes that a person may experience: mania, already interviewed. I coded and categorized chunks of depression, and a mixed state, the last of which entails a interview data, discovering such things I expected to find, combination of the symptoms that mark the first two. Each such as the faster pace of writing when manic, and those kind of episode can vary in intensity: a person might be I did not expect to find, such as the concept and specific, mildly depressed or mildly manic (known as hypomanic) detailed causes of depression block. In the meantime, I as well as intensely depressed or intensely manic. kept a researcher's journal detailing my reactions to the The definitions of mania and depression depart interviews as I continued the study and the changes in my significantly from the common use of these terms. Mania coding scheme. is more than being "up" or euphoric, and depression is Much of what the participants in this study said more than just being down or "feeling blue." In the words about writing and bipolar disorder is aligned with studies of Goodwin and Jamison, manias involve "heightened of famous writers, such as Kay Redfield Jamison's mood, more and faster speech, quicker thought, brisker Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the physical and mental activity levels, greater energy (with Artistic Temperament, and supports other work that a corresponding decreased need for sleep), irritability, tries to understand bipolar writing processes, such as perceptual acuity, paranoia, heightened sexuality, and neurobiologist Alice Flaherty's the Midnight Disease: The impulsivity" (32). Depressions, they write, "are usually Drive to Write, Writer s Block, and the Creative Brain. characterized by a slowing or decrease in almost all aspects However, whereas other studies about writers with bipolar of emotion and behavior: rate of thought and speech, disorder tend to focus on the products of established or energy, sexuality, and the ability to experience pleasure" (in)famous writers, their diaries and work, and textual (65). Moreover, in contrast to the common meaning of analyses of their writings, this study focused on the people depression, clinical, bipolar depression can come upon a and the stories they have to tell about their lives, writing person out of nowhere, lacking a reason, a phenomenon processes, and writing practices. It is through such stories documented as far back as the second century A.D. that these writers can teach us about how and why and in (Goodwin and Jamison 5). what unique ways they write despite or because ofshifting perceptions, impaired concentration, engulfing emotions, Effects of Bipolar on Writers and Writing and memory loss. There is no question that the writing processes of people in a bipolar episode differ from the typical processes of Technical Definitions of Bipolar Disorder others. The differences are major and complex. One is that Bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression writers who are symptomatic or undergoing treatments are and now considered one ofthe manic-depressive illnesses, forced into or barred from certain abilities despite their is said to "magnif1y] common human experiences to struggle not to be. If editing is needed but the person is larger-than-life proportions" (Goodwin and Jamison xix). in a manic or hypomanic state, the editing might be over According to the 2007 edition of Frederick K. Goodwin the-top. If idea generation is needed but the person is in a and Kay Redfield Jamison's seminal text on the disorder, depressed state, such idea generation may not be possible. bipolar disorder is a medical illness that reaches across If drafting by hand or taking notes is usually the most 19 Language Arts Journal ofMichigan effective for a writer and that writer is undergoing certain With depression block, there is the sheer difficulty treatments, hands may shake too much to use and vision of putting anything at all on the page: difficulty finding might double or triple. In addition, ideas may be foggy and even the most basic words, difficulty coming up with ideas, chunks of memory may be erased. difficulty "keeping things together," difficulty mustering the energy to write, difficulty mustering the energy to even Writing and Depression sit at the computer. For Jane, a very bright, hardworking Although the clinical definitions of bipolar episodes found nineteen-year-old woman, writing in college was daunting. in Goodwin and Jamison's work and in the psychiatric She described for me what happened when she tried to diagnostic manual the DSM-IV-TR are extensive and write for school: "I'd get to the computer," she told me, informative, most useful for giving context to the exploration "and I'djust sit there and watch the line just blink ..

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