Bipolar disorder

...ba href=/bipolar disorder/a/b who couldn't get to their doctors' offices.

It was exhausting but gratifying work, he said.

He took pleasure in the small successes, like finding an extra blanket for a shelter resident who was cold.

And he holds a special memory of a bigger triumph - helping to secure housing for a family with an infant on a feeding tube who had become ill at the shelter.

The hospital told the family the baby couldn't return to the crowded school, and as Zook was leaving to return to Ohio, he learned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had found the family a home.

``What a great way to end,'' he said with a smile.

Not all his professional experiences have such happy outcomes.

In working with sexual offenders, ``we never say somebody is not at risk (of offending again),'' he said.

The best he can hope for is to lower that risk.

So he concentrates on leaving work at the office, he said.

He also developed a workshop celebrating the positive aspects of sexuality, which he has presented for audiences including churches, the Ohio Psychological Association and psychology interns at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.

It's a way of countering the bad he sees so often in his practice, he said, and of remembering that sexuality is ``not just this negative thing that hurts people.'' It's a way of maintaining hope, because that's what his work is all about.

Mary Beth Breckenridge is a Beacon Journal staff writer.

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