Bipolar disorder

...ba href=/bipolar disorder/a/b and also attacked journalists for judgmental coverage of her case.

"I have a lot of things in my part that unfortunately became very public," she said.

She said she was taking medical treatment for bipolarity and also planned to study journalism.

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...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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The search for extra money The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, better known as SETI, needs you.

Actually, they need your money.

The Berkeley outfit that's looking for signs of life out there is hoping to raise $750,000 to fund its SETI@Home project.

For the uninitiated, SETI@Home asks volunteers to use their home computers to download and analyze radio telescope data.

To date, 5.4 million volunteers have donated more than 2.4 million years of processing time to the effort.

But even with all that free computing, they still ...