In 2002 Lucy Newlyn found herself incarcerated in a mental hospital in Leeds She had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act as a danger to herself & others during a psychotic episode after several nights without sleep The psychosis was triggered by nearly three years of grieving for a dead sister followed by a vigil at her father's deathbed during which she hallucinated that his hospital ward was a trench in the First World War The episode uncovered psychiatric problems which led in due course to a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder (manic depression) This condition which involves extreme mood swings is classified as a disability & requires medication; but it is also a source of creativity giving access to some unusual
Dimensions of human experience In her fifteen-year diary Lucy Newlyn discloses recurring episodes of mania depression hallucination & paranoid delusion Describing her struggles with family life & the workplace she de-mystifies bipolarity & critiques an environment which still even in the twenty-first century is suspicious of mental illness Above all she celebrates the discovery that writing poetry enables a cathartic engagement with her own condition Diary of a Bipolar Explorer is not a self-help manual but a candid confessional memoir which offers no easy solutions It involves a mixture of observation & reflection interspersing poetry with prose Written accessibly it will appeal to anyone interested in mental illness creative process & the life of the mind