BipolarLab.com

“Oh dear T.S. Eliot, little did you know that you would become subject to the psychiatric investigation
Oh dear T.S. Eliot, you bark away while your partner’s bipolar symptoms are under conversation
Oh dear T.S. Eliot, you are white and hairy and require all our love and attention”

A couple of weeks ago I got excited by T.S. Eliot. I haven’t really yet become a civilized, deep thinker behaviorist (that would be incompatible anyway), I am talking about our very own T.S. Eliot, a white poodle who lives with one of my participants on the other side of the Atlantic. Like some of my previous participants’ toddlers or 3 year olds who every now and then wanted to participate in our private symptoms chat, thus T.S. Eliot has taken his her (07/11/07 update: just found out that T.S Eliot is apparently a lady poodle, how bipolar is that ) place in the Hall of Fame of the eMonitoring Project. She sits quietly listening to our skype conversation and she starts barking when things warm up. She has been following us for a few weeks now, and soon enough I believe she will have her prime time on skype video. I have always been very fond of dogs, but a dog who even wishes to participate in my project and also is called T.S. Eliot, sorry I just can’t help myself but fall in love with it. She still remains to be SCIDed therefore her diagnosis remains a mystery to us, unlike Jordan our famous Tibetan spaniel bipolar dog in Greece. Jordan actually suffers from unipolar mania, a very rare form of bipolar illness, with very few reported cases in Italy. His poor partner, Boubou a white tibetan princess, suffers from a unipolar illness, which has become chronic and treatment resistant thanks to Jordan’s high libido. Actually, one of the first bipolar papers I became co-author during my first research assistant job with Dominic Lam, examined that very issue of marital and sexual satisfaction of Bipolar partners. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to add a paragraph about Jordan & Boubou. I think their case requires a special paper on the archives. But, T.S. Eliot sounds pretty healthy to me, just a bit curious about what we do, that’s all.

I am still not sure how I got through last week. I did get that ethics application for the attachment project completed on time, so now it’s on to the real work, learning how to conduct properly that childhood interview and assessing people. I have a feeling that my poor participants will tolerate me for once more as they will be the first to get a taste of this. They are my pioneers in many ways, and despite their ups and downs they have faith in our project, myself and all our troubles. And believe me things are not perfect in the project. Many things are under-development and still bugs crop up that slowly but steadily are being dealt with. We have our first almost respectable version of our iMonitor charts always using the google system. But a lot of human input is still required. In many ways this is both the strength as well as the weakness of this project. The human input really is really vital for coaching people through the whole ordeal of mood monitoring. I very much doubt that without it people would go very far with it. I don’t know, I might be deluding myself because this is the way it has worked for us, but at the end of the day people get some specialist input in assessing their symptoms and peripheral support. This sort of human input is very difficult to replace, and of course unfortunately quite expensive to make it large scale. I guess unless we have a third and a fourth group where we slowly and more systematically fade out the human contact, it is probably difficult to tell, how and whether it would work.

But something good may be there out on the horizon in terms of the true remote development of this project. I am still waiting to hear of some formal offer but a good and promising company may be around to help. I am about to complete my second group, and today I almost convinced my supervisor that we should end the recruitment, but a few more people need to come on board really. I feel my time to retire into the realms of our massive database is approaching. At times, especially when I discuss some of my clinical observations with my participants (within reason of course), I do get the feeling that we have learned a few new things about bipolar symptoms and their micro-life, the whole process of mood monitoring and the differences between people. Nevertheless, these observations will all fade away unless the data are properly analysed and the papers are written.

Poor Mushroom’s sacrifice may have had some meaning after all. Maybe he was sacrificed for the Greek Gods. Poor Mushroom was a little red cat who recently was brutally but accidentally “murdered” by rat poison (not by me). I feel sorry for the guy because he was the most neglected cat Britain has ever come to meet. Cats are a sacred animal in Britain. They enjoy a special status, only secondary to the Queen, or almost an equal status to her. But poor Mushroom never got this attention, our love and affection. My wonderful english host family in some strange way gave all their love to another fine animal and stray dog Moly. So poor Mushroom was left alone and unattended in the garden as usual but this time accidentally with plenty of rat poison around him. He passed away with grace like the last roman emperor who was never recognised for his right to be and reign.

Ave poor Mushroom, we miss you!