Me, Myself and I
Through a stellar career in entertainment law, where she represented such celebrity clients as Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, and Universal and Columbia Pictures, Terri Cheney secretly struggled with manic depression. But after a suicide attempt in 1999, she abruptly walked away from the law to write about her illness, both as a form of therapy as well as to encourage others with mental health conditions to tell their stories. Her book, Manic, became a New York Timbestseller, and has recently been optioned by HBO for a series.
Cheney is a member of the Community Advisory Board of the UCLA Mood Disorders Research Program, the nation’s largest nonprofit research consortium regarding manic depression. She also founded a weekly community support group at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. Recently she met up with ABILITY Magazine’s editor-in chief in Beverly Hills, Califonia, to talk about her very bumpy—but still very interesting—ride.
The rest of this article can be found in the current issue of ABILITY Magazine www.ABILITYMagazine.com
Reprint of this article was provided by Chet Cooper, Publisher of ABILITY Magazine
Chet Cooper: You don’t like the term bipolar disorder.
Terri Cheney: It feels too politically correct to me. Besides, bipolar makes it sound like there are only two poles, and only two places you can go—either manic or depressed—when in fact there are many different places you can go.
Cooper: Maybe a better term is multipolar or polypolar.
Cheney: Polypolar. “You’ve gotten polymorphously perverse” is a phrase that Woody Allen used to love. I think manic depression is better than bipolar because it just spells out how you feel. But even that term gives you a sense of the states being limited to the two. I think they should just call it a mood spectrum disorder to fit all sorts of different categories.
Cooper: It’s like autism. There’s a spectrum.
Cheney: Spectrum is a pretty word.
Cooper: Rainbow works, too.
Cheney: Yeah. Bipolar rainbow. I like that. That’s better
.
Cooper: I think a lot of people don’t realize there are other states between the two poles.
Cheney: Well, the most common one for me is hypomania, and that’s the best part of being bipolar, where you’re really charming and creative and energetic but you haven’t lost your judgment and you don’t do incredibly reckless things the way you do in the manic phase. I think of it as the stage right before mania, although you can also switch back and go into depression. I functioned at a hypomanic level most of my life. That’s how I was able to function as a lawyer and in my daily life.Then there’s what they call the mixed state, which is the worst