There’s a great article in New York Magazine about a young woman whose psychiatrist started her on a roller coaster of medications at the age of 16. She found out about Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) several years later when she read an article her parents had mailed to her. She said that CBT was:
“…a treatment Dr. Titrate [not his real name] had always dismissed. After I read it, I set up an appointment. When I related my personal history and described my symptoms to the cognitive behavioral therapist, she said… “You sound like you’re bipolar II, a form of manic depression.”…[She told my mother:] “Your daughter has been misdiagnosed and mis-prescribed,” she said. I felt ecstatic and oddly vindicated… I’m back in college now, in my senior year… The therapy is different from any I’ve ever had. I feel like I’m taking a college course on myself… The only medication I’m on now is Lamictal, the mood stabilizer… I have been free of manic feelings and suicidal thoughts.“