An excellent two part BBC documentary with Stephen Fry: an exploration of what it means to live with mania and depression – manic depresion as he calls it, or “bipolar disorder” as the [M]admen would have us call it…

Fry tells his own story with frank openness and invites us along as he visits with friends and others to learn how they make sense of what they experience – whatever it is they call it – and learn find ways of living with it:  from cocktails of drugs, monthly electroshock, talk therapy,   to careful  food and diet and learning to accept…

Fry is very open about his own struggles both with himself but also with the torment of trying to decide if he’d be better off being more “orthodox” and  taking meds.

..but he is  clear that what he’s found works best him is talk therapy – or as he says

” it’s nonsense to call it talk therapy – it’s really listening therapy – the opportunity to hear oneself say out loud ….”

it’s really listening therapy – the opportunity to hear oneself say out loud ….

He also visits friends, some in their homes and some of whom you might recognise, who also share with great honesty and courage; and visits with an american family with two boys who have been diagosed and take multiple medications and with  a doctor in England who treats herself with food …

Part 1 opens with the story of Fry’s very public meltdown as he reached the height of success – he’d just opened his first one man show in London and he disappeared. I remember this vividly:  I was working in London at the time and that Monday morning walked past the Albery Theatre on the way in to the office and saw the signs on all the doors. A few days later the story came out very publicly in the press – the story you’ll hear him tell here.

part 1

part 2

Fry and others collaborated with  BBC on these two films and the project also produced a series of educational materials like this  bbc booklet -bipolar secret life of manic depression…

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• uppy-downy mood-swingy kinda guy recoverynetwork:Toronto
• Lowering the Threshold for Bipolar: “More Harm Than Good” (madinamerica.com)
• Stephen Fry confirms Hugh Laurie reunion: We’re cooking up new project (digitalspy.co.uk)
• The Paradoxes of Bipolar and Creativity (manicmuses.wordpress.com)