Handbook for Healthy Living with a Mood Disorder

Twelve years ago, author Stephen Nawotniak was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a weeklong hospitalization for a severe case of depression. He has been coping with the symptoms and in the process of recovery since. In Handbook for Healthy Living with a Mood Disorder, he offers an experienced-based sharing of skills and tools that have worked for him. Relying on his experience as an occupational therapist, he focuses on constructing a meaningful quality of life using life skills that are effective and important for everybody while addressing and accommodating the needs unique to a bipolar disorder. He explores the intervention approaches-developing skills, modifying tasks, providing tools, modifying contexts, adapting environments, and developing task alternatives-that allowed him to differentiate his diagnosis from his personality, discern problem areas, and restructure his lifestyle so that he could successfully live with the condition and not simply manage or cope with it as an illness. Using his methods, you can do the same. Praise for Handbook for Healthy Living with a Mood Disorder "Steve has taken his lived experience with a mood disorder, his self-help peer support group facilitation skills, and his successful career path as an occupational therapist and created an easy-to-use self-help workbook that allows you to become your own life coach. ... I recommend the book for anyone who would like to make changes to improve life in any or all of the dimensions of recovery and wellness." -Rita Cronise, coordinator for the International Association of Peer Supporters (iNAPS) "This book is highly recommended as a clinical method for his perspective on living with the ups and downs of this condition with a graded, positive process. ... Nawotniak is creative in the language he uses, which is appealing, practical and original, conveying his message with an immediacy that is typical of occupational therapy interventions." -Mary Donohue, PhD, OTL, FAOTA