Bipolar disorder

...ba href=/bipolar disorder/a/b, a long-term brain illness that causes unusual, severe shifts in mood, energy and ability to function.

The disorder, which affects more than 2 million U.S.

adults, must be carefully managed.

When it is not, or when it cannot be because, as often happens, patients do not take the medicine that helps smooth their emotional peaks and valleys, families unravel, careers implode and life may turn violent, even deadly.Bipolar patient Rigoberto Alpizar had not been taking his medicine last December when he allegedly made bomb threats aboard a plane.

Federal air marshals shot him to death on the plane at Miami International Airport.

In January, another bipolar patient, Troy Anthony Rigby, jumped from the cabin door of a plane in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and ran toward a terminal.

Authorities stopped him with a Taser gun.

He later died after a heart attack.

Rigby's sister said he had not been taking his medicine.

"It's a very sad disease," says Pardo, 57, an addictions counselor who lives in Kendall, Fla.A petite woman with short, red-streaked hair who projects a compelling, often amazing sense of calm, Pardo is a recovering alcoholic who has been dry for two decades, and a two-time divorcee after marriages riddled with physical abuse and emotional instability.

It took her years, she says, to understand that the definition of her life was "trauma all the time," to reach "a point where I knew I couldn't make it better."Pardo's older son, Eric, now 36, was diagnosed with b...

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