Bipolar disorder

...ba href=/bipolar disorder/a/b, Terri Marklein has watched friends struggle against government bureaucracies and social stigmas.

Now 60, Marklein has sat on a bevy of boards and countless committees to improve the public mental health system.

"If you've been in the system as long as I have, you've seen everything tried," Marklein said.

"I just want the people who come after me to have better care than I've had." Still, Marklein thought a new state program to transform Washington's troubled mental health care system had started with an interesting concept: Listen to the patients.

At a "listening session" at the Evergreen Club in east Spokane, more than 75 patients, advocates and mental health professionals listed what works and what doesn't in Washington's mental health programs.

In the corner, a court reporter furiously typed notes â€" part of reams of transcripted comments that will be pored over by analysts in Olympia later this year.

"People in this room can teach me some things," said David Brenna, a senior policy analyst with the state's five-year transformation project.

The federal government has given the state of Washington more than $13.6 million to transform its mental health system from a lumbering bureaucracy into a sleek, responsive and consumer-friendly model.

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