Stim Kits for Neurodivergent People

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A little while back, I started looking around to make a kit of stim tools that I could use to help me sit through long meetings and lectures. Although the combination I’ve settled on (for now) isn’t perfect, I thought it might be helpful to share what I’ve learned and what I’m doing right now.

Why use stim tools?

It’s widely known that autistic people make use of stim tools like the ones I’m going to be talking about. For autistic people, using stim tools may be a method of stimming or “repetitive behaviors”. Many ADHDers use stim tools as well. However, it’s not just autistics and ADHDers who can benefit; for example, bipolar people can definitely use them, particularly in a manic (or mixed) phase. Stim tools can also be used by people who struggle with compulsive behaviors like skin picking (dermatillomania) or hair pulling (trichotillomania). Finally, stim tools can be used to help anyone, regardless of diagnosis!

Making a stim kit

I started out making a single stim kit, but I soon found it might be more beneficial to make several kits of different sizes. However, the first “stim kit” I want to talk about doesn’t usually come out of a box or a bag — I’m talking about wearable stim tools! Chewable necklaces are very popular among people who bite their nails or non-chewable objects such as pencils. Mine, though, is a little different…

I made this out of a lanyard (this one is from the Pokémon North American International Championships a few years ago) and a bike chain keyring fidget. This is often my go-to stim tool as I wear it around my neck and don’t have to fumble around in my bag for it. It’s also pretty cheap; there are multiple Etsy listings for $5 plus shipping (like this one) and even listings for fun pride-themed colorways which I might just buy right now! Be right back! (By the way, I have no affiliation with any of the products I may link to in this article, nor am I receiving any compensation for including them.) Anyway, these little fidgets are silent, small, and I think they make a particularly satisfying stim for people who may be prone to skin picking. And you can use any lanyard your heart desires!

Now, onto the actual stim kits…

Pocket kit

I’ll call the smallest one the “pocket kit” because it just fits in the front pockets of my jeans (American Eagle Womens’ Jeggings). It easily fits in the front pocket of my mini backpack, as well as my bigger backpacks. As you can see, I’m using a Pokémon box (this will be a theme) which is on sale at the Pokémon Center for $20. It also comes with dice and cute status markers for playing Pokémon Trading Card Game, but my favorite asset was this box. So what’s in it?

  • Magnetic Haptic Slider from clickbricks — I like this stim tool a lot! It’s not completely silent, but it’s quiet enough to fly under the radar in most situations. To me it feels kind of like flicking a lighter, which is something I do… a lot.
  • Another keyring bike chain fidget!
  • Nicotine gum, for reasons stated above…
  • One stick of Crystal Light lemonade and one bag of Tazo Earl Grey tea.

I’m looking for new stim tools that will fit in the pocket kit, so if you have any recommendations, please send them to me! I really want to hear from you.

Next, the medium kit…

Medium Kit

This one is also related to Pokémon! It’s a Japanese deck box. One of my favorites, so it seems fitting I put some stim tools in there. If you’re not familiar with deck boxes, they are generally not too large. I think this one is around 3 in (height) x 3 in (depth) x 4 in (width). The NeeDoh Nice Cube just fits inside.

  • NeeDoh Nice Cube — I love this squishable sensory tool! It’s a little bit like a stress ball but it feels soft/gooey, almost like putty or slime. It’s not as sticky, though. It’s got a nice weight to it and the size is perfect for my hands. That said, they make other products at NeeDoh; the cube is probably the most popular.
  • Infinity Cube — I got this one at a gas station somewhere on Long Island, but the Etsy creator who I linked carries some really cool colors and right now they’re on sale for $3. Totally worth it! Infinity cubes can be folded into different configurations almost, well, infinitely. I’ve enjoyed using this one for years now. It’s a tried and true inclusion.
  • Fidget Cube — The fidget cube isn’t my favorite fidget, but I do like some of its functionalities. It is nearly silent. I like the buttons (especially the clicky ones, which do make a subdued sound) as well as the switch/lever and the thumbpad (circular appendage).

That’s right… everything in the medium kit is a cube! (✿◡‿◡) A happy little accident.

Large kit

Now, I don’t want to lie to you, so here it is: a fidget spinner can just barely fit in the deck box I’m using for the medium kit. But, I’m afraid of doing damage to the box by overloading it… so my 2 fidget spinners were included in this amazing bag I got from the Pokémon Center. It’s sparkly! But any toiletry bag should do. Pick your favorite or buy one that suits you!

  • 2 fidget spinners — The blue sparkly one is plastic and lighter than the iridescent metal one. They were both gifts and I quite enjoy using them during long lectures.
  • Another bike chain keyring fidget in “unicorn” colors.
  • Tangle Therapy Relax — Has textured segments with a slightly give to them. I generally like to manipulate it in my hand and don’t like pulling the pieces apart, but Tangles are good for either!
  • Keyboard fidget — This uses mechanical keyboard testers as a stim tool! Mine is 4×1 keys and uses Blue switches (Cherry MX I believe?), so it’s quite clicky and noisy, like typing on a typewriter. However, this listing on etsy says they also have linear switches (which are much quieter) and I bet they could even use both!

Have I missed an important stim? Let me know in the comments!

Atmosphere stims

There are some stim tools that can’t be carried around in a box or a bag, but rather, are meant to be used at home or in a private space. Here are some of those things:

  • Candles/incense/air freshener — I highly recommend Morning Star incense!! They even come with a little holder.
  • Weighted blanket or sleep pod
  • Bubble bath or epsom salts
  • Large stuffies — I have a Pikachu!
  • Swings, indoor or outdoor
  • A medium-sized fan — or bigger; for summer

So that’s what I’ve learned! Share in the comments your favorite stim tools and how they help you!

Luminous Mind to be released March 30

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My name is Dr. Elliot Gavin Keenan. My second memoir, Luminous Mind, is being published on March 30! That’s also World Bipolar Day (and Vincent van Gogh’s birthday). I’m a transmasculine poet with autism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder — among other things.

Elliot Gavin Keenan arrives as a first-year PhD student in psychology at UCLA. He is autistic and bipolar, aspects of himself he has learned to work with; however, under the sunny Los Angeles sky, something changes. Manias become darker, more distressing, and the cycle of mania and depression accelerates until the boundaries of each state are indistinguishable. By April, Elliot decides to commit suicide. He wakes up in an ICU three days later.

Luminous Mind is about one young trans man’s struggle with mental illness and the paradoxical trauma experienced by suicide attempt survivors. His rhapsodic prose captures hope, despair, ambivalence, and everything in between. Deeply introspective and honest, Luminous Mind is a story of healing.

Do you know anyone with bipolar disorder? This book might just give you the insight to understand that person a little better. Or, if you have bipolar, maybe you’ll learn something about yourself!

Have you ever attempted suicide? Luminous Mind explores healing after experiencing things few people can relate to.

Do you like poetry? There are several original poems in the book! In addition, poetic logic is used throughout the book, which is focused on relaying subjective experiences through language.

Are you transgender? Are you autistic (or ADHD)? This book is a tiny piece of our shared history. I’m sharing my story in hopes that we cannot be erased.

Read the first chapter here!

Pre-order the ebook here!

Print edition will be released March 30!

Showering is too much. What can I do?

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I won’t lie to you; there are many days where showering just seems like too much. This post is just a list of things that might be helpful if you struggle with showering every day. I am not an Amazon affiliate; I do not earn anything from recommending certain products, it’s simply a matter of my personal taste.

Face: It’s very important to me that my face stays blemish-free because I have skin-picking issues. First, I cleanse my face at least once a day with a makeup remover wipe. Any of these wipes should do the trick, my favorites right now are Burt’s Bees Micellar (I prefer the rose water one) and Neutrogena Hydro Boost Wipes.

After cleansing, I use Pixi Glow Tonic (an exfoliating toner that helps shed dead skin cells). I prefer the “to go” variety with pre-saturated pads. I wouldn’t start using exfoliating toner every day; start by using it every 2 or 3 days and let your skin get used to it.

Finally, since I just used a toner with glycolic acid, I definitely want to finish up with something that has SPF and moisturizing. My skin tends to be a little bit red and this step definitely helps. There are many products you could choose, but I go with something easy: Neutrogena City Shield Water Gel. It absorbs rapidly into my skin, reducing redness and protecting my skin from sunburn.

Body: Unfortunately it’s hard to compare to a real shower, but you can get by on baby wipes. Always freshen up your deodorant of choice every day. I use Dr. Squatch aluminum-free deodorant in the cooler months where I don’t sweat as much. During the summer, I use Old Spice Wilderness Antiperspirant and Deodorant.

I’ve tried Lume deodorant and it doesn’t play well with my skin condition (hidradenitis) but that or another “whole body” deodorant might be helpful.

Hair: Advice on how to keep hair fresh varies by hair type. If you have Type 1 or Type 2 hair (straight or slightly wavy) most likely a conventional dry shampoo will work best for you. You spray it in your hair, it absorbs grease, and you comb it out. I have Type 3 hair (curly), which means I avoid combing my hair like the plague. Instead, foam shampoo — like this one from Not Your Mother’s — works great for me.

I’ve also used foam shampoos meant for pets and that works as well if you’re on a budget! I’ll admit I’m not sure what the best products are for Type 4 hair, but please drop any recommendations in the comments!

Neurodivergent App Review: Habitica

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It seems like everyone’s got their own favorite app for managing daily tasks and to-dos, but so far my favorite is Habitica. I think it could be really useful for neurodivergent people with the right personality — Habitica is very much a “menus” game. If you love fine-tuning and deep personalization, Habitica could be perfect for you.

Habitica is available as both an app and a web interface. They both have utility, which I’ll discuss, and having both available may be great if you spend a lot of time at your desk. It is free with paid upgrades available; I haven’t paid for any upgrades and none of the features I’ll mention in my review are paid features. When you start playing (we are “playing” since Habitica is all about gamification, or turning your life’s to-do list into a game) you get a pixel avatar, which you can level up, equip items and pets to, and more. But the pixel avatar isn’t even the best feature of Habitica, in my opinion. You could play quite efficiently paying no attention to the avatar at all — more on this later.

Set habits, dailies, and to-dos all in one app

It’s possible to use two or even three different apps to track all of these kinds of tasks. A more precise definition:

Habits: Tasks you want to do regularly (or reduce doing — habits can be negative), but that don’t have a fixed schedule for their occurrence.
Dailies: Tasks you want to do at specific times, for example, every day, or every 3 days, or every Tuesday and Thursday.
To-dos: Tasks you need to do once.

Each task can have checklist items, which increase the value of the task. In fact, there’s a pretty crazy level of detail and precision that can be attained in the settings menu for each task. And the system can have a learning curve, but that in itself makes the system appealing for menus-type people.

Pause damage as you need it

For neurodivergent people, it’s important any app can be flexible to avoid overwhelming us. Habitica normally inflicts damage on your character for missing dailies — however, there is an option in the setting menu to pause damage. No damage will be inflicted on you until you turn damage back on again and there is no cost or downside to pausing damage. You can continue to get rewards as usual.

Custom rewards

Habitica comes with many built-in rewards, including items for your avatar, eggs and hatching potions (which create pets), and so on. But the primary currency of the game is gold, and you’re able to set custom rewards for in-game gold. I set up a Pokemon TCG pack for 40 gold. Any reward can be integrated into Habitica! Try using a preferred treat, video game time (or any favored activity), or small amounts of spending money as rewards.

Personalization of the app and the web interface

The Habitica app allows you to choose from an impressive number of color themes, sound themes, and even custom app icons. Meanwhile, the web interface allows you to see everything you have to do at once — and gives the option to toggle tasks that are not due today so that they are invisible.

The thoughtful design and customization features of Habitica are what make it the best app I’ve used. It can be overwhelming, though, for people intimidated by those features. But it’s free, so why not give it a try?

*I am not affiliated with Habitica.

Subtle Signs of Bipolar Disorder

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Since the early days when Emil Kraeplin defined the characteristic symptoms of bipolar disorder, a certain set of core features have been used to identify the disorder. Changes in mood, energy levels, and sleep all spring to mind. Then, there are other things… symptoms or signs that aren’t core to the identity of bipolar psychopathology, but might indicate a relatively higher or lower risk among individuals who are otherwise at a comparable level of risk for bipolar disorder. In other words, there are subtle signs that can help identify whether or not a diagnosis of bipolar disorder would be applicable to any given individual. Perhaps you’re looking out for these signs in your own behavior — or, perhaps you’re making observations about a friend or family member who you suspect may have the disorder. In any case, here are a few subtle signs.

You don’t have a consistent bedtime.

People with bipolar disorder are known for their changeable sleep schedules. Most people, when asked a question like, “When do you usually go to bed?” have a quick and easy answer. But if that question gives you pause and necessitates a complex timetable calculation in order to answer, it could be a sign that your circadian cycle is out of whack.

Bipolar disorder is one cause for circadian rhythm dysfunction. There are others — some, like non-24 hour sleep/wake disorder, cause a person’s bedtime to cycle predictably around the clock. But the changes in bipolar disorder are unpredictable. People may stay up late for weeks or even months, only to crash overnight into a routine of sleeping half the day or more. There is currently no way to know for sure when someone’s moods will change.

You have hyperfixations.

Have you ever become obsessed with a new hobby, concern, or passionate interest, only to grow bored of it and abandon ship before completing a grand project? Bipolar people are often known for their various pursuits (especially in the creative domain), as well as their mercurial sense of motivation to finish the tasks ahead of them. If you take on far too many tasks, or frequently change tasks without completing the initial task, you may be bipolar — or perhaps you just have what scholars call a “cyclothymic temperament”.

The term hyperfixation comes primarily from the ADHD world, but like many symptoms of ADHD, they’re a subtle sign of bipolar disorder too. Similarly, more generalized difficulties paying attention and staying focused are subtle signs.

You’re physically absent a lot.

As a rule, I don’t think people with bipolar disorder are emotionally absent from the lives of our loved ones — all too often, it’s actually the opposite, and our powerful emotions can impose themselves on people and situations. However, we are physically absent… quite a lot. Maybe you’re calling out sick from work again, or you’re about to drop a letter grade due to your absence from class; as a child, you may have been disciplined at school. This tendency to not show up to things can hinder achievement both personally and professionally.

You have neurological soft signs.

Neurological “soft signs” refers to certain problems with motor coordination and sensory integration that are observable on an exam from a neurologist. This includes difficulties with fine motor skills, errors in sequencing motor commands, and challenges with sensory perception. These problems are commonly talked about in reference to schizophrenia. However, it stands to reason that they also have at least a moderate association with bipolar disorder as well. Both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are mental illnesses with a neurological or neurodevelopmental origin, and they have genetic overlap, as well as overlapping symptomatology (psychosis is the hallmark of schizophrenia and may be present in bipolar disorder as well).

Are there any other subtle signs you can think of?

Medication review: Abilify (aripiprazole)

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Do you remember the TV commercials for Abilify? At the time, it was being marketed in such a way that a lot of people thought it was an antidepressant. It’s not, though. Abilify is most definitely an antipsychotic, primarily indicated for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and it comes with the full list of potential side effects that another antipsychotic might come with. When Abilify was first released, its manufacturer pushed a lot of half-truths (or null-truths) like “Abilify is weight neutral” (26% of patients experience clinically significant weight gain, albeit not as much as Zyprexa) and “Abilify doesn’t cause movement disorders” (it can cause tardive dyskinesia (TD), and 9% of patients experience akathisia — a profound inner restlessness that patients often describe as wanting to “crawl out of [their] skin”). Overall, 15% of patients experience a serious adverse drug reaction.

All of that said… Abilify isn’t a bad drug.

I took Abilify for four years before developing a TD-like movement disorder that ultimately led me to discontinue it. (The same movement disorder worsened on Vraylar, which is a very close relative of Abilify.)

It might be fair to say that Abilify is misunderstood. I don’t think it should have been marketed the way it was. But when we’re talking about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, well, it’s not the worst of the options. Clozapine and Zyprexa are worse for weight gain. Haldol is worse for movement disorders, like TD and akathisia. But is it effective?

Actually, Abilify was pretty effective for me. When I first started taking it, I would sleep all day. I’d fall asleep in my classes, like, head-on-desk, passed out. (This was particularly troublesome in my class on child abuse.) Then I started taking a stimulant for my ADHD, and everything seemed to be in harmony. Until a new psychiatrist took me off of Abilify to try a newer drug (Latuda — which did nothing for me). When I eventually went back on, I had all kinds of weird side effects. I couldn’t sit, or even stand still — a condition that my psychiatrist would later describe as akathisia. And my head started to shake involuntarily.

So how effective is it, really? The maximum dose of Abilify is 30mg, but benefit at doses higher than 15mg has not been established. A concept that is sometimes floated around in psychiatry is that of equivalent doses, usually CPZ (chlorpromazine) or OLA (olanzapine) equivalents. In this case, we’ll use haloperidol equivalents. 15mg Abilify is equivalent to 7.5 mg of Haldol which is also equivalent to a whopping 750mg quetiapine (Seroquel) — very close to the maximum dose of 800mg. We can see here that Haldol is stronger than Abilify, and Seroquel is weaker. We can tell based on the maximum dose of each and where the others stand in comparison.

Think of it like this: the maximum daily dose of Haldol is 30mg. The equivalent dose of Abilify is 35 mg — above the maximum. So it’s a bit weaker than Haldol. Meanwhile, Seroquel is much weaker. (In fact, Seroquel is the lowest potency antipsychotic, and usually isn’t used to treat psychosis.)

The moral of the story is not to trust the commercials put out by drug companies. I won’t be taking Abilify again, and unfortunately my movement disorder has never completely gone away. For some people, though, it’s a great medication.

Medication review: Lithium

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To kick off my series of medication reviews, I have to start with lithium. It has a certain symmetry that is almost beautiful: it saves my life every day by reducing the amplitude of my bipolar symptoms, yet in excess, it almost took my life. I couldn’t get the metallic taste out of my mouth for weeks. Here’s the thing: if you’re bipolar 1, there’s a good chance that it’s the single most effective medication out there. It is for me. That’s why 6 weeks after the overdose in 2018 I was put back on it. At one point, the pharmacy was dispensing it to me weekly.

Lithium is so effective for some people, and not for others — so, researchers talk about “lithium responders” and “nonresponders”. There are certain subgroups of people who tend to be responders. For some reason that is not entirely clear, people who have manias before depression are more likely to be responders than people who have depressions before mania (and most people are consistently one or the other).

Lithium is all-natural. It comes from the earth; it is mined for use in batteries. Discovery of lithium’s mood stabilizing properties in 1949 (though I’ve heard that indigenous Americans once soaked their mentally ill in lithium-rich hot springs) was a happy accident. Yet it has nearly as long been known to cause kidney damage, thyroid damage, diabetes, and more. I have a skin condition called hidradenitis suppurativa that was likely caused by lithium. It causes my inner thighs to develop painful lumps that turn into bleeding lesions, and occasionally develop a secondary infection of the skin and soft tissue.

As terrible as all of that is, I don’t feel I could be living the life I live today without being on lithium. I take 1200mg daily, though the dose is measured by blood level, so one person’s 1200 could be another person’s 1000, or something like that. It has enabled me to recover from the state I was in around 2018, to stay out of the hospital and out of trouble.

Lithium’s mechanism of action is quite complex. It alters the activity of voltage-gated channels throughout the brain. There are no other drugs closely related to lithium, or that share its mechanism of action. Pharmaceutical companies haven’t been able to improve upon it. It remains unique in its treatment of bipolar disorder. One of its more notable clinical features is that it reduces suicidality. It’s ironic to note lithium’s high potential for toxicity.

A common side effect of lithium is tremor. I notice it mostly in my hands; they shake and it’s difficult to eat with a spoon. Interestingly, in toxic situations, the tremor can get much worse. Lithium toxicity also causes profound nausea and vomiting. Toxicity can result from dehydration, or even from travel from a low elevation to a higher elevation. But it’s not just the narrow band between therapeutic and toxic doses that makes lithium deadly — it’s the fact that there is no antidote to lithium toxicity, and lithium doesn’t bind to activated charcoal like most other drugs. Only with hemodialysis can lithium be removed from the body.

What to do if you’ve been prescribed lithium? Drink a lot of water, and wait 1-2 weeks to really feel the difference. Lithium has been absolutely lifesaving for many people. Maybe it will be for you.

If Autism Isn’t a Mental Illness, What Is?

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My name is Elliot. I’m an autistic psychologist with bipolar 1 disorder (and ADHD). I’ve been mentioned in passing [1] [2] in news articles about autistic autism researchers, but I prefer to keep on the science side of things. I usually only use Twitter for personal entertainment, sometimes biting my tongue as I weigh the pros and cons of engaging in autism discourse. I don’t entangle myself too deeply in advocacy work. For the most part, I keep my opinions on controversial things low-key no matter which side I am on. This post is a divergence from that tendency.

I have not uncommonly heard people object to classifying autism as a mental illness. It’s almost taken for granted that autism doesn’t fall under that umbrella. You may be surprised to know how people try to justify it if you actually ask them “Why isn’t it a mental illness?” Indeed, when pressed the most common responses are along the lines of:

  • “Autism is a neurodevelopmental disability” / “You’re born with autism”
  • “Autism isn’t an illness” / “Autism doesn’t need to be treated”
  • “Autistic people aren’t like *those* people”

The common element in all of these responses is a lack of understanding of what mental illness is and what mentally ill people experience. The question I want to ask back is this: If autism isn’t a mental illness, what is?

I’m not unsympathetic to the cause of not labeling people as having an “illness” because they’re neurodivergent, but why is it okay to do it to schizophrenic folks and not to autistic folks? There are plenty of mad people who don’t exactly view their diagnosis as an illness, although opinions in the psychiatric community are varied on this topic. Some consider diagnostic labels to be a prison, and others a gift. We sure live with plenty of labels.

Pharmaceutical drug labels.

Mental illness takes many forms. Some of them are quite properly classified as “neurodevelopmental disabilities” (including schizo spec, bipolar disorder, and ADHD — among possibly many others). The disorders I just mentioned are predominantly caused by genetics, and are therefore present at birth. The expression does change over time — but don’t autistic people have qualities that change as they grow and learn?

People refuse to acknowledge the close similarities between autism and schizophrenia (and other severe mental illness).

I’m going to flat-out recognize this: I think a lot of our community is biased. There are a lot of autistic people that are sanist, and they’ve been permitted to perpetuate misunderstanding.

My own therapist once tried to convince me after I admitted to experiencing delusions earlier in the week that I was merely referencing thoughts that were “overly rigid” as a result of my autism. My psychotic symptoms were being falsely attributed to my autism, and a lack of care was being given where care was needed.

And in the real world autistic people are at high risk of being mistaken for schizophrenic and taken to an ER for psych evaluation when they’re in distress. People can be treated horribly. But instead of stepping back and saying “Why do we treat mentally ill people horribly?” we’ve decided that allyship is not for us and we double down on “Autism isn’t a mental illness.” We cast non-autistic (and some autistic!) neurodivergent people as the Other.

To be quite honest, I think some autistic people are scared of crazy.

Perhaps they’re scared of people who may be erratic, hard to predict, or have dramatic emotional reactions.

A person wearing black Converse and a blue hoodie.

Are there reasons to set autism apart from conditions we consider “mental illness”? I just don’t see the justification for viewing autism as so singularly unique from other conditions. It’s possible that, in the future, we could redefine and do away with the label of “mental illness” altogether. I’ll be interested to see how language evolves for neurodivergent folks. I hope even moreso that people in the autistic community approach the psychiatric community with an open mind, and not with fear or prejudice. I see hope for a future of cross-disability solidarity.

1. Does loneliness warp the mind?

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I’ve often experienced loneliness
as a toxin. A chemical that corrodes, gnaws through my bones a chasm, a gaping wound in the depths of my ribcage. This characteristic feeling alerts me to the river tide drawing me in, the cosmic forces of mania & depression.
It is a fundamental emptiness;
it destroys everything, it leaves nothing
& nobody untouched.

Mold creeps through a sheet of paper, drifts gently down like a leaf, thin & translucent.
When did I start feeling this way? It had to be — but what changed?
Risperdal & lithium was my lucky combo, wasn’t it? I almost thought I had outrun you, my friend. What do other people see when their eyes are laid to rest? Stay awhile.
Stay & consume me.
I’d rather die a star-crossed lover than a miserable fool. To long for sorrow is as natural as breathing.
Bad Thoughts reverberate in the canyon between my ears.
I imagine a room painted with red. It’s my bathroom — but I am not there now. This isn’t my couch.
A speck of dust floats by, idly drifting in an infinite universe–

Bipolar Disorder vs. Manic Depression

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If you’ve heard anything about the term “manic depression”, you might know that it is an older term for bipolar disorder. Here’s my unpopular opinion: “bipolar disorder” is a less accurate and more dehumanizing term than “manic depression”. 

Why? There are several reasons.

  1. The new name “bipolar disorder” was coined for the wrong reasons, and decided by the DSM committee without real input from people who live with the disorder. Officially, the reason was to reduce the stigma associated with inappropriate use of the existing term… but that clearly has not worked, because “bipolar” is now used in the same ways or worse. The real reasons for the change in terminology, despite little to no change in the diagnostic features associated with the disorder, were most likely generated by political division within the APA and not really out of concern for the people who live with it every day. At the time of the change, there was a vocal group of people with bipolar/manic depression that advocated for the original name, including Kay Redfield Jamison (author of An Unquiet Mind).
  2. As far as I know, bipolar people have seen little to no real-life benefit from the change. In fact, “bipolar” conjures a lot of misconceptions about what the condition really looks and feels like. Mania and depression are not really opposites — they feed into each other (by definition), and they can even occur simultaneously. People with bipolar/manic depression typically do not fly from one mood to another within minutes or hours, but “bipolar” seems to encourage that misconception while “manic depression” gives the idea that the disorder is a particular kind of depression, and doesn’t just come and go at the drop of a hat. Rather, much like non-bipolar depression, bipolar moods come in episodes that usually last for weeks to months. “Depression” is something people have more understanding of, even if “manic depression” is a different kind of it; “bipolar” sounds like something else altogether, and it sounds like something scary.

What do you think? Which term is more stigmatized? Is one term more accurate than the other?