Summary
News from the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
When Jill Leukhardt was an executive in a booming technology business a few years back, her bipolar II illness—which she didn’t know she had—dovetailed nicely with her job. “I was one of those determined to have it all,” she says. “I’d work until 2 or 3 a.m. because we needed the output. I loved it. And I’d routinely take the red-eye home from the West Coast to catch my daughter before she went to preschool.”
About
Seven years ago, however, the disease caught up with her, and Leukhardt became seriously ill, first with depression. She left her job and sought help from both a psychiatrist and a Hopkins-trained psychologist skilled in psychotherapy. Gradually, life fell back into place. But after a year, her therapist spotted a disturbing trend, and, concerned, Leukhardt made her way to Dr. Smith, a clinician and research director for Hopkins’ Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program. Abnormal sleep, part of the fabric of Leukhardt’s bipolar disorder, had made hers a complex but not uncommon case.
“I’m a severe night owl,” she says. “I tend to push sleep later and later.” More than once the young woman has slept all ...
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