Barbara’s article on emotional invalidation has a lot of details to help you recognize emotional invalidation and the many forms it comes in. What I’d like to see is a follow-up article addressing ways to respond within yourself and to the other person when you know you are facing emotional invalidation.

GrrlScientist was recent sent an article on Creating a Mouse Model of Bipolar Disorder to study the manic phase of bipolar disorder. GrrlScientist gave a good background of the biology of bipolar disorder and potential research directions in this area. What’s important to note is that the mouse system did not cycle between mania and depression the way humans do. This underscores the limitations of studying an illness that is often a manifestation of a complex, whole system by 1) picking apart its individual components and 2) using a different system, albeit a whole animal system. One of the limitations of modern medicine has been our fixation on “targeting” specifics, which makes sense on one level, but also means we may often miss unforeseen long term side effects. (more…)