MENTALIZATION SKILLS FOR MENTAL HEALTH

Understanding Bipolar Mind-Blindness

How anosognosia and impaired theory of mind reasoning explain certain aspects of manic behavior

Republished from the Center for Applied Theory of Mind

Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash

“I have become fundamentally and deeply skeptical that anyone who does not have this illness can truly understand it. And, ultimately, it is probably unreasonable to expect the kind of acceptance of it that one so desperately desires. Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome.”

This is a quote from a book written by Kay Redfield Jamison called: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, (1) in which she shares how she experiences having and dealing with bipolar 1 disorder.