A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology. 2016 / Bipolar disorder is a chronic, turbulent mental disorder that is associated with feelings of distress and ‘caregiver burden’ for those who are close to people diagnosed with it. Although there is a relatively large body of literature on ‘caregivers’ of people with chronic mental illness, it is argued that this body of research has been reductionist and one-dimensional. Furthermore, the extant research has, in general, treated any person close to someone with bipolar disorder as a ‘caregiver’, without giving attention to the unique relational dynamics between two people. This is especially true for romantic partners of people with mental illness. This study used a social constructionist approach and a narrative methodology to analyse individual interviews with five people who are or had been in an intimate relationship with someone with bipolar disorder. This study used Bamberg’s (1997) positioning analysis to explore the ways in which the participants constructed important characters, their audience and themselves in their narratives of living with someone with bipolar disorder. It was found that there are many more possibilities for dynamics between a person and his or her partner with bipolar disorder than a simple caregiver-care receiver dynamic. It was also found that for the participants the term ‘caregiver’ is not an appropriate description of their role and position. This research is important as an example of embracing the complexity of family members’ experiences of mental illness, and to open the possibility of narrative intervention for partners of people with bipolar disorder

The study was based on the clinical data summaries ("item sheets") of children who attended the Maudsley Hospital during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These summaries were used to identify a group of 80 child and adolescent psychiatric patients with an operationally defined depressive syndrome. The depressed children were individually matched with 80 non-depressed psychiatric controls on demographic variables and non-depressive childhood symptoms by a computer algorithm. At follow-up, on average 18 years after the initial contact, information was obtained on the adult psychiatric status of 82% of the total sample. Adult assessments were made "blind" to case/control status, and included standardized measures of "lifetime" psychiatric disorder and psychosocial functioning. The depressed group was at increased risk for affective disorder in adult life, and had elevated risks of psychiatric hospitalization and psychiatric treatment. Depressed children were no more likely than control children to have non-depressive adult psychiatric disorders. These findings suggest that there is substantial specificity in the continuity of affective disturbances between childhood and adult life.

This study investigated the relationship between the interaction of diabetes and depressive symptoms and neuropsychological functioning in a sample of adolescents. It also addressed whether disease-related variables such as age of onset of diabetes and presence of severe hypoglycemic episodes were predictive of severity of depressive symptoms. The neuropsychological domains of memory, attention, and overall cognitive abilities were assessed using a cross-battery approach with subtests from the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning - Second Edition (WRAML2), the Stroop Test, and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test - Second Edition (KBIT-2), respectively.The total sample consisted of 62 youth between the ages of 13 and 17 years: 31 adolescents diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and 31 adolescents without diabetes. Adolescents were recruited from an outpatient pediatric diabetes clinic and an outpatient general medicine pediatric clinic located in Tuscon, AZ . Significant findings included that the interaction effect of diabetes and depressive symptoms scores was statistically significant for verbal memory, verbal recognition, verbal memory delayed, verbal list learning, and attention/concentration. No significant differences were found for verbal working memory, visual memory, visual recognition, or attention/inhibition. Regression analyses showed that none of the diabetes-related variables included in the study variables (age of diabetes onset, duration of diabetes, presence of severe hypoglycemic episodes, type of insulin therapy) were predictive of depressive symptoms scores that adolescents reported.

This thesis contains two parts: a novella, Plum Sickness and a critical essay, Wrestling the Blue Cactus: grappling for meaning through story and the self: writing depressive illness. The novella tells a story of Judith Black, a young woman with depressive illness. It begins with her admission to hospital after a suicide attempt, then goes back in time to explore her relationships with her lover Michael, and her parents John and Aileen Black. There are fantasy passages showing her attempts to deal with negative attitudes to mental illness as well as the illness itself. The critical essay is a deliberate effort to explore the various influences on my approach to the writing of depressive illness without referring to any personal illness experience of my own, and without making detailed reference to Plum Sickness. I wanted to write a piece that could stand on its own, as well as an accompaniment to the novella, and I kept the depressed person in mind as my reader. The essay begins with particular medical writings, is followed by memoir, Anne Sexton's poetry, Virginia Woolf, The Imitation of Christ, self-help literature, and finishes with self-representation in fiction and an exploration of storytelling through The Blank Page by Isak Dinesen.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-102).

Zugl.: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2008

Thesis, PlanA (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Uppsala, 1981. / Bibliography: p. 47-56.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1991. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-109).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 31).