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Well, when you talk about murder, you're getting into the possibility of religious
beliefs governing people's view of that kind of behavior.

"There are severe cases of bipolar 1 w/psychotic ideation that end up as murder-suicide so there does need to be an awareness and an education about the stigma and why it is a stigma in the first place."

More than an awareness of the stigma, there needs to be an education of what bipolar illness is, that there are degrees of mildness or serious conditions in the illness and what methods of treatment, both classic psychotherapeutic counseling and prescribed medications and holistic views of treatment for those who are capable of going into remission.

I think there might be more educational information available on alcoholism than there is public information for bipolar illness; maybe that's one reason why alcoholism is considered more acceptable (among those who wish to accept it) than is bipolar illness (among those who wish to reject the bipolar personality). But I don't know that for a fact, just as noone else does.

Definitely, more education is needed, in my view, for the public's awareness of bipolar illness and its treatment, severity, mildness, and remission, effective medications, etc..

Needless to say, there's enough data out there already that anyone who wants to try to dissuade himself/herself from having a stigma to learn in order to relieve oneself of the burden of carrying a stigma in one's psyche.

Genetic