compare + contrast

Ally has said to me: "Everything seems so much more real now. People, especially, but even the laptop and that hat seem more real."

When I was finally stabilized on bipolar treatment and began living on my own, I had a completely different experience. Everything felt /unreal/--floaty and dreamlike. For a year and a little longer, my perception of the world was tainted by an overwhelming sense of wonder and awe that extreme emotions were /no longer influencing my every action/. Most of my interactions with people were done with half my mind dedicated to thoughts about how that interaction would have been impossible for the first 20 years of my life.

Mind you, I don't /like/ to compare my bipolar to A's transgenderism. It's not something I do deliberately and consciously. It's just that bipolar is such a huge part of my life, and getting treatment was such a dramatically transformative experience, that I tend to automatically view the entire world through a bipolar lens, noting similiarities and differences. It's actually why I'm glad to see a significant difference between my experience and A's. I mean, you're bound to share a number of similarities when you both live a large part of your younger life suffering from something /really big/, but not knowing "what's wrong" with you.

I don't see transgenderism as a mental illness. I see it as a societal issue, first, and a bodily issue, second. It's only a bodily issue, of course, if the transperson finds it to be so. Of course, when untreated, it can cause mental problems, but that's true for basically any untreated physical problem.

But then, I believe that most mental illnesses are likely to be physical in nature. We just lack the technology to see what is causing the real problem. It's like that one ST:TNG episode, where a woman attempts to use a magnifying glass to diagnose a man suffering from radiation; she concludes the problem is that his blood is boiling. (Why, yes, I /did/ just use a Star Trek analogy to bolster my argument. What?)

It's a little hard for me to balance this belief with the belief that there's nothing shameful about mental illness. I don't think (that I think that) there is anything shameful about mental illness, but I know my society sure as hell does. Really, "mental illness" is really just a great big dumping ground for the things whose dominant "symptoms" are such as we, as a society, find far /icky/.

Speaking of, the DSM-5's coming out soon. Proposed changes for Bipolar and Related Disorders can be found at http://www.dsm5.org/proposedrevision/Pages/BipolarandRelatedDisorders.aspx . There are many new subtypes, which I am glad to see. I especially like "Substance-Induced Bipolar Disorder" (if not the name) and "Other Specified Bipolar Disorder" (it has numerous subtypes: for example, "Subsyndromal Hypomania - Short Duration" is for a bipole with all around normal Bipolar type II symptoms EXCEPT their hypomanias don't last long enough for a Bipolar type II diagnosis). Good stuff, IMO. I'm a little surprised, though, to not see anything specific for juvenile bipolar disorder, which is symptomatically quite different from BD in adults.

The (second set of) proposed revisions for "Gender Dysphoria in Adults" (previously proposed change was "Gender Incongruence"; it's "Gender Identity Disorder" in DSM-IV) can be found at http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=482# . The "Rationale" tab elaborates on the odd status of GD as a mental symptom of a bodily problem.