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6A Daily News – Tuesday, September 18, 2012 Vitalityfitness health & Bipolar II disorder affects 6 million in U.S. CHICAGO (MCT) — Harlan Didrickson was a model of middle-class sta- bility. to get baby to sleep LOS ANGELES (MCT) — Nearly every parent knows that gripping, awful feeling of a baby screeching when put to bed _ and the ensuing anxiety over whether to pick up the baby or tough it out and let the baby cry. New research shows that a middle ground not only brings peace to the household but also does no harm. So-called behavioral sleep techniques don't cause long- lasting harm to the child or to the relationship between the parent and child, the study published this week in the jour- nal Pediatrics shows. "Parents and health professional can confidently use these techniques to reduce the short- to medium-term bur- den of infant sleep problems and maternal depression," the study authors wrote. The study, by researchers at several institutions in Aus- tralia and Britain, of children at age 6 was a follow-up to one conducted of infants whose parents reported sleep problems at age 7 months. Middle ground a sound way He lived with his partner of more than two decades in a handsome Victorian on a leafy North Side Chicago street. He worked as manag- er of executive and adminis- trative services for a high- powered architectural firm, where he made hospitality and travel arrangements for large meetings and oversaw budgets that ran into mil- lions of dollars. He was not the kind of person who would go to lunch with friends and come home having spent $4,500 on a puppy and a month of obedience training. Or who would get up at 2 a.m., go to Dunkin' Donuts, then drive to Indiana and back, snacking on Munchkins. became. Four years ago, his life But that's who he was upended by bipolar II disorder, the same illness recently diagnosed in U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. This is not Jackson's Nearly half of parents report sleep problems in their babies who are 6 months to a year old, and techniques such as "controlled comforting" and "camping out" have been shown to help. Controlled comforting is gradually increas- ing the time taken to respond to the baby's cries. Camping out has the parents sitting with the baby as he or she settles to sleep and gradually moving toward the door. Such techniques also have been shown to reduce mater- nal depression. story. People with the disor- der — nearly 6 million in the U.S. — have unique experiences with the illness, which cycles between moods of manic energy and deep depression. MCT photo Harlan Didrickson poses for portrait, Aug. 17, outside his Rogers Park neighborhood home. He has written about his bipolar disorder and also blogs about his cat Charlie, at left. Jackson. Like the congress- man, Didrickson, 54, had weight-loss surgery before being diagnosed with bipo- lar. He had a gastric bypass procedure; Jackson had a duodenal switch. It became a serious com- plication in his treatment. The weight-loss procedure, which causes the body to absorb fewer calories, pre- vented him from absorbing the full dose of his antide- pressant medication. And, the researchers say, there could be other benefits: "Furthermore, teaching parents to regulate their children's sleep behavior is a form of limit-setting that, combined with parental warmth, constitutes the optimal authoritative par- enting style for child outcomes." "Crying it out" was for a time recommended, at least among mothers desperate for sleep. That "is not usually rec- ommended nowadays because of the distress it causes par- ents and infants," the researchers wrote. infant study, and drew their conclusions in the follow-up based on information from trained researchers, who con- ducted the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory and showed parents how to collect salivary cortisol to measure fatigue. The Kids Sleep Study returned to the participants of the 1010 Jefferson St., Red Bluff 527-7800 Complete Dental Care • Cosmetic Dentistry • Adults And Children • New Patients Warmly Welcomed! www.MooreandPascarella.com "The symptoms of bipo- lar disorder can be very dif- ferent from one person com- pared to another," said Dr. John Zajecka, a psychiatrist with Rush University Med- ical Center who specializes in mood disorders. Manic states leave some people euphoric, others irri- table. "There are people who can function their whole lives in these hypomanic states," though they may lose marriages, jobs and money, Zajecka said. Depression, too, can appear in a variety of ways. Some sufferers stay in either mania or depression for decades; others cycle between them many times a day. And people respond differently to treatment. But Didrickson's struggle provides one look at how bipolar II disorder and its treatment can affect a life. And he does have one key factor in common with began when he started feel- ing extremely stressed at work. He considered him- self skilled at his job but felt beleaguered by office poli- tics. Didrickson's illness fighting a lot of fights on dif- ferent fronts in my life, and that I didn't have the where- withal, the energy," he said. "I was profoundly unhap- py." "I felt as though I was Ambien to fall asleep. "At 6 o'clock I woke up, got dressed and went to work. I was probably still high," he said. "Then some- where around noon, I would crash. I would go to the men's bathroom, go sit on the toilet and fall asleep." His partner, Nick Harkin, a publicist with an entertain- ment and lifestyle marketing firm, had no idea how deeply troubled Didrickson had become. He changed jobs, twice. He still felt miserable. And he also felt trapped, having to do work he now found unbearably stressful. More than 60 percent of people with bipolar engage in substance abuse as they try to self-medicate their inner pain. Didrickson was among them. At night he would wash down some hydrocodone, an opiate he had been prescribed for a back injury, with beer. He would stay up till 4 a.m. watching TV, then take redbluff.mercy.org www.redbluff.mercy.org Diabetic Education 5:30pm-9:30pm 9/19 Columba 529-8026 Grief Support Group 3:00pm-5:00pm Thursdays Coyne Center Books Are Fun 10:00am-5:00pm 9/20 7:00am-2:00pm 9/21 Main hallway of the hospital 736-1326 www.redbluff.mercy.org RANDAL S. ELLOWAY DDS IMPLANT DENTISTRY 2426 SO. MAIN ST., RED BLUFF 530-527-6777 FACT SHEET ON DENTAL IMPLANTS DENTAL IMPLANTS: * are the most advanced tooth replacement system ever devised *help preserve jawbone to prevent the appearance of premature aging 528-4207 n't show up on time for a planned out-of-town get- away. When he arrived the next day, he was morose, secretive and exhausted. "It was a very abrupt shift," Harkin said. "It was quite obvious that something was very seriously wrong." Didrickson was thinking of ending their relationship, he told Harkin. And he wanted to move to Califor- nia's Death Valley. He want- ed to start a new life. "I was falling apart," Didrickson said. "It was this desperate: 'I will do anything to get out from under this pressure.' It was like having a heart attack, and if you don't get out from under it, it will kill you." But then Didrickson did- Back home, he called a friend who had once been his therapist. She asked if he was suicidal. "I was, like, 'Of course I am. I think about it all the time,'" he said. "'It's the only comfort I have.'" a phone. er, because I couldn't recall the sequence of activities ... turning on the water, step- ping into the spray, getting wet, washing," he said. He lost 40 pounds and "I could not take a show- neglected bathing and grooming. And yet there were also times when Didrickson felt powerful, energetic, nearly like a superhero. He could do any- thing he wanted, no matter how dangerous or destruc- tive, with no consequences. He ran red lights. He drove the wrong way down one-way streets. "I felt like I was back to being in charge, like I was back to saying, 'It's going to go like this because I said so,'" Didrick- son said. "I felt kind of emancipated. "I thought, 'Wow, this (antidepressant) Paxil is really working.'" But it wasn't. A psy- chopharmacologist gave him a new diagnosis: bipolar II disorder, a form of bipolar disorder with less extreme mood swings. worked. Then a friend with bipolar recommended Adderall, the stimulant often prescribed for attention deficit disorder. No antidepressant His doctor prescribed a standard amount. It did nothing. She told him to see a psy- chiatrist. He did, and was told he had depression — a common initial diagnosis for people with bipolar, who generally seek treatment during a depressed phase of the illness. So Didrickson took another dose. And he felt a little better. The antidepressant the doctor prescribed didn't work. Didrickson developed memory problems, to the point where he forgot how to do simple tasks like using "I started to feel buoy- ant," he said. "I always talk about feeling underwater. I felt like I was finally break- ing the surface." He didn't know why he needed a higher dose. But then he came upon online message board postings by people who had undergone gastric bypass surgery and then found that their antide- pressant medicines stopped working. 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