"Patty Duke is an Academy Award winning actress and best-selling author.  She's also a person with a mental illness.  Duke was in Indianapolis Thursday night.

Patty Duke has made it her life work to talk openly about her battle, and victory over bipolar disease.

Patty Duke was sigining copies of her book at an event sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company.  But she's best known for her acting career.  She won an Oscar at a young age for the portrayal of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.

But even then, she was battling her own demons, bipolar disease, which wasn't diagnosed until she was in her 30's.  "Once my diagnosis was made and confirmed and accepted by me, the medication that was begun in my case is lithium.  It worked," Duke said."

"In the U.S. alone, more than two million people have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder while millions more don't know they have it. Bipolar disorder is one of the many mental illnesses that healthcare officials are calling attention to as part of National Mental Health Awareness Week.

"Mental illness is just like any other illness. It's treatable and it's not something that someone brings on themselves, and unless they're getting treatment, they really can't control it," said Marsha McElroy, Weems Mental Health Center therapist.

"This is a chemical imbalance. It's actually a form of depression but it's extreme mood swings that last for periods of time, but this can be treated," McElroy said.

Actress Patty Duke knows first-hand about this. She spent hours on Friday talking to media all over the country about how she suffered before her diagnosis was made.

"When I began treatment, I have been so blessed so that as I got so much support and that's when I decided that it's wrong to keep this secret. You have to tell," said Duke, who suffers from bipolar disorder."

"The Ruth Pauley Lecture Series will celebrate its 20th anniversary with six lectures dealing with history, religion, mental health and the world of animals.

Patty Duke, an Academy-Award winning actress, will discuss "A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness" on Sept. 30. Duke has published two books dealing with the problems of manic-depression.

All Ruth Pauley Lectures will be in Owens Auditorium on the Sandhills Community College campus in Pinehurst, except the presentation by Jack Hanna. That will take place at the R.E. Lee Auditorium on the Pinecrest High School campus in Southern Pines.

Lectures begin at 7:30 p.m. and are open to the public. The lectures are free of charge, and no tickets are required.

The Ruth Pauley Lecture series is sponsored by Sandhills Community College, the Moore County League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, and the Moore County school system."

"Bipolar disorder costs twice as much in lost productivity as major depressive disorder, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has found. Each U.S. worker with bipolar disorder averaged 65.5 lost workdays in a year, compared to 27.2 for major depression. Even though major depression is more than six times as prevalent, bipolar disorder costs the U.S. workplace nearly half as much ? a disproportionately high $14.1 billion annually. Researchers traced the higher toll mostly to bipolar disorder's more severe depressive episodes rather than to its agitated manic periods. The study by Drs. Ronald Kessler, Philip Wang, Harvard University, and colleagues, is among two on mood disorders in the workplace published in the September 2006 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Their study is the first to distinguish the impact of depressive episodes due to bipolar disorder from those due to major depressive disorder on the workplace. It is based on one-year data from 3378 employed respondents to the National Co-morbidity Survey Replication, a nationally representative household survey of 9,282 U.S. adults, conducted in 2001-2003." 

For more of this story visit the NIMH Website.

October 21, 2006 in Chicago, Illinois