[shutterbug]

yes...you can have mania multiple times in a years span...especially if you are a rapid cycler.

One of the best books I would recommend for you to read is "A Brilliant Maddness" By Patty Duke. She struggled mostly with mania and the book is a good first one to read because it is written in alternating chapters between her and her doctor....if I remember correctly. It was one of (if not THE) first book I read on manic-depressive illness and I just can't explain to you how it opened my eyes wide open to what it was all about.

Another book I really enjoyed was Touched with Fire (Manic-Depressive Illness And The Artistic Temperament) By Kay Redfield Jamison who also wrote another good one titled An Unquite Mind

Jamison writes that recent research strongly suggests that writers and artists show mood disorders at a rate larger than that of the general public.

"Many are unaware of the milder, temperamental experessions of the diseases or do not know that most people who have manic-depressive illness are, in fact, without symptoms (that is, they are psychologically normal) most of the time."

"The rhythms and cycles of manic-depressive illness, a singularly cyclic disease, are strikingly similar to those of the natural world, as well as to the death-and-regeneration and dark-and-light cycles so often captured in poetry, music, and painting. Seasonal cycles are particularly important, and these are discussed in the context of the scientific evidence for seasonal patterns in moods and psychosis, as well as illustrated by the seasonla patterns of artistic productivity evident in the lives of Robert Schumann, Vincent van Gogh, and others."