8 year old Seth broke from the grasp of Jane, his harried mother, for the third time in 10 minutes. Tearing across from the emergency room, he stopped short, transfixed by a peice of paper lying on the floor. His red rimmed eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets and his mouth twiched violently, as if he were in pain. Indifferent to Jane's pleas to stop, he procedeeded to pick up from the the floor every peice of paper, no matter how filthy, with hands that were reddened and raw. It was the state of his hands that had precipitated the trip to the hospital: Seth had spent most of the night in the bathroom, washing them over and over.
With his head jerking spasmodically and his fingers pecking at the peices of paper and cigarette butts, the boy resembles some strange overgrown bird. Then, suddeningly terrified, he flew back to Jane and began pulling on her arm. "Mommy, Mommy,let's leave!" he whimpered. "They're going to kill us. They're coming!" Jane tried her best to calm him down, but she too was beginning to panic. Two days before, Seth had been a perfectly normal little boy whose most serious health problems were the occasional cold or sore throat. He had become mentally ill over night.
What caused Seths anxiety, his tics, his o.c.d. Astonishingly it was probably that minor sore throat, his doctors concluded. Today, scientists are increasingly coming to recogize that the bacteria and viruses that frequently invade our bodies and cause sore throats and other minor ailments may also unlease a host of mental and emotional illnessess, including anorexia, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and bipolar.
From the magazine-Psycology today-August 1999 issue
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Scientists in Switzerland have been studing the frozen brains of dead people that had bipolar disorder. They found a virus growing there and noticed that with stress, the virus would grow bigger, causing more bipolar problems. They are working on a pill affecting the virus, thus decreasing the infection. it should be available in the US in about 3-5 years. Lets all hope it goes through the testing progess quickly. Holly Reilly
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