Siri Hustvedt Quotes

In total, I was diagnosed with depression by eight psychotherapists and psychiatrists over a period of thirteen years. Diagnosed wrong. Absolutely wrong. My accurate diagnosis was manic depression, or what we call bipolar disorder today.

I have a chemical imbalance that, in its most extreme state, will lead me to a mental hospital.

When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder the year I turned 50, it was certainly a shock. But as a journalist, knowing a little bit about a lot of things, I didn't suffer the misconception that depression was all in my head or a mark of poor character. I knew it was a disease, and, like all diseases, was treatable.

I was diagnosed as bipolar.

Manic depression is a type of depression, technically, and it's the opposite of uni-polar. Manic depression is also called bi-polar disorder. Some people don't like to call it that because they think it makes it sound too nice, when the reality is if you have manic-depression you have manic-depression.

One of things so bad about depression and bipolar disorder is that if you don't have prior awareness, you don't have any idea what hit you.

I was diagnosed with everything from schizophrenia to multiple personality disorder.

Every now and then I hear voices in my head, but not very clear. I can't understand what they are saying. It's a mental illness. I have been diagnosed as a manic depressive.

It's not a giant thrill to hear someone give you the label 'manic-depressive,' but to me I was so relieved. What I was suffering from had a name and could be treated.

I was doing general medicine and during residency, I moonlighted at a psychiatric hospital and became very interested in the medical care of psychiatric patients.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was barely out of my teens. Like our olive skin tone and caterpillar eyebrows, I guess it just runs in the family.

Being bipolar is a huge exaggeration of your emotions. You can be pretty high and also terribly low, so I've been through it all.

I knew something was wrong; I was constantly tired, and I'd developed numbness on my left side. I'd also become paranoid that my boyfriend was cheating on me. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. One psychiatrist told me I was bipolar.

I had developed manic depression [bipolar disorder] ... and the main symptoms the constant voice in the head telling you to kill yourself.

I am a rapid-cycling manic-depressive, bi-polar one disorder, which means I can have thirty or forty episodes a year, and I used to have thirty to forty episodes a year.

Mania is as bad as it gets. If not treated, it will become worse, more frequent, and harder to treat.

I learned that I suffered from bipolar II disorder, a less serious variant of bipolar I, which was once known as manic depression. The information was naturally frightening; up to 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder will commit suicide, and rates may even be higher for those suffering from bipolar II.

There's no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.

I have a type of bipolar that swings up and down all day long. There are significant mood swings within a day, within a week, within a month. I go through at least four major episodes a year. That's really the definition of bipolar rapid cycle. But I have ultra-rapid, so I have tiny little episodes all day long.

Even when I'm in a really great, steady and stable place... I'm clinically bipolar, so that always exists - a darkness always exists.

So when I was 24, someone suggested to me that I was bipolar, and I thought that was ridiculous. I just thought he was trying to get out of treating me. But he was also responding to the chaotic nature of my life.

Bipolar disorder, manic depression, depression, black dog, whatever you want to call it, is inherent in our society. It's a product of stress and in my case over-work.

Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

The scientists at the end of the 19th century had people coming to them with this weird behaviour, and they didn't know what was going on but there seemed to be a similarity. They needed an answer, so they made up one.

A mood disorder is dangerous. You've got to get those dramatic waves of highs and lows stabilized. It's dangerous if you don't.