I read in the New York Times that a child of a parent who has bipolar disorder is thirteen times more likely to develop the disorder than a child of a parent who does not. A piece on Salon about madness and motherhood, written by a woman with bipolar disorder, evoked the following reader responses: “I grew up with a bipolar mother, and it made my childhood nightmarish”; “I know I’m supposed to say I’m glad I was born but [as a bipolar child of a bipolar mother, I] am not”; “Someone who is mentally unstable enough to require psychotropics should NOT, under any circumstances, even consider
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