• Poetry
• bipolar disorder
• mental health
• psychopathology
• creative writing
• therapeutic writing
• mental health care
• psychiatry

A Polish patient well known to the team was admitted with a manic relapse of bipolar affective disorder. Early on in his admission he attended an art group and there he wrote, with a bright red felt tip pen, the following poem:

It continued…

We came for lunch. They had horses and guns. But there was only one entrance and exit.

They gave me a black quadrangle. It contained your God. You shot my cohort. 300 people. I was rather upset. You were polite. You said you wanted gold. I gave you Ashurst [psychiatric intensive care unit] sized room of gold. You melted did. You hated my 12 wives. You were scared of my army. You played poor chess and I learned Spanish in a week. You sentenced me to death for treason and polygamy. Oh yeah! And incest (whatever that is).

Now I am at the airport with my blue and red Adidas back and my Wilson tennis racquet.

“Please stop at the Marriott” I tell him. YOU SHOULD HAVE KILLED ME WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE!!! What are you doing, brother?

At the time he was unable to explain what his poem meant due to his prominent flight of ideas, pressure of speech and grandiose delusions. Each of these features, unique to mania, …