Mental Health and running!!

[Glass Ankles]

This may be a bit heavy duty for the forum but here goes!

I have recently been diagnosed with rapid cycling bi polar disorder (a form of manic depression to most of us) I am aware that I have certainly self treated with my running over the past year or so and in my opinion it has basically kept me going through some tough times.

After a pretty spectacular mental crash I am just returning to training following 3 months off. I guess my questions to the forumites is has anyone else suffered from this kind of thing and kept their running going? My fear being, it will affect one of the things I love doing most.

Any comments/ support/ suggestions would be gratefully received. PM me if it is easier to talk that way.

Cheers

Lawrence

[millipede]

I think you are very brave to post and good news to hear you are getting better.

I definitely think running can help with mental health, as you say.

Hope it continues to help.

[Raymond Hickman]

As a long term sufferer from depression I have found that running produces real benefits for me...just wish I had found it out a bit sooner.

Take care - Raymond

[egor]

i havent suffered with a bi polar 1 disorder (assume its 1 and not cylomania, you ve been told youve got, which is simialr but milder) I work in the field so to speak and theres a lot of research, good quality quantative studies that demonstrate the positive benefits on mental health running/excercise has. The nature of a bipolar disorder, as im sure your aware, is moods being up and down and there is usually a big gap between the two, somedays people cant get out of bed somedays they can take on the world. It may be fair to say that somedays you may feel too low to be bothered to run, but its whether you can make youself or convince yourself to get out of bed/the door or whatever and go for a run, which may help a bit (serotonin is boosted in the brain) other days you may feel like you could do a BGR without any prep. Everyone is different, to answer question, i would imagine it will effect your running and somedays negatively, but it also depends on what you do about it, meds, therapy etc and determination as mentioned above.

also I dont mean this patronisingly, but good on you for posting, mental health is something we all have but rarely talk about

dave

[Mud]

rapid cycling bi polar disorder

Isn't this what Graeme Obree had/has?

[XRunner]

Some rather famous people are listed in this document:

http://www.obad.ca/Bipolar_Affective...o_Recovery.pdf

[Brummy John]

Stephen Fry is bipolar and did a cracking documentary on the illness. In a nutshell many found it a benefit and a burden, increasing their creativity at manic times.

Look on YouTube to see his documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnHBT9JeZq0

[Sasquatch]

I work in mental health. I wish that more people could discover the benefits of exercise. Especially running, as its the sense of achievement and freedom as well as natural endorphins etc that people (including myself) find so beneficial.
I'm sure this applies to everyone who runs - whether they've been unfortunate enough to be diagnosed as having a mental health problem or not, but I'm sure that if people can manage to motivate themselvs to run when they might not feel like it (in those low times) that it'd help lift mood and get through those times quicker.
It does seem a bit prescriptive and intrusive when i suggest that people try to exercise more though - i get these looks and i can tell exactly what people are thinking... and i don't blame them one bit.

[Margarine]

Makes a lot of sense to me. Our bodies are designed for regular strenuous exercise - designed in the stone age and all that. Specifically, we are designed to gather but also CATCH our food - not pick it off the shelf. If you look at the way people are and the way people live - I don't mean to be condescending to chavs by the way - I just mean that people must FEEL pretty lousy day to day without a decent amount of exercise and crappy food, and the way that the media and consumer culture encourages this inactivity and passivity, it is hardly surprising that there is so much misery. It's funny that people at work etc. think you are bonkers for doing some of the things you do as a fell runner, butI can't help feeling sorry for them.

Good luck everybody.

[Graham]

Top thread.

There's an irony to the description of a mental health diagnosis as 'unfortunate'. My own diagnosis (depression) was one of the best things that could've happened to me, because it meant I now had something I could live with and try to recover from. Before that I found life hard and confusing and didn't know why.

I reckon that learning to cope with my own mental illness has in many ways set me up nicely for endurance sports. You really have to get to know and accept yourself for both. I've always lived a pretty full-on life, I suppose to try and make up for the (mostly undiagnosed) mental illness, and it always ammuses me when well-meaning folk, like the occupational health nurse I had to go and see this week, try to reassure me with a pat on the knee and the line "Depression - Its not a sign of weakness you know". If they lived a week in my (running) shoes they'd have to go to bed for a month!