Asking the Right Questions During Treatment

Sara Schley, MBA, CEO and co-founder of Seed Systems and patient with bipolar disorder, believes in there being right questions and wrong questions to ask in bipolar disorder treatment. In this clip from Psych Congress 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Schley discusses the questions the right doctor finally asked after 25 years of struggling with symptoms and finding adequate treatment as well as what tips she has for clinicians treating similar, difficult cases.

Be sure to reserve your spot now for Psych Congress 2023 and join us in Nashville, Tennessee, in September! For more news and insights from 2022's conference and pre-conference coverage, visit the newsroom.

Did you miss the first part of Schley's interview? Watch it here.

Sara Schley, MBA, is the author of the acclaimed memoir, BrainStorm: From Broken to Blessed on the Bipolar Spectrum. She is a business consultant, speaker, and author who has led organizational transformations at renowned companies worldwide. She is a mother, grandmother, and community leader and has been married to a great guy for 26 years. She is also on the bipolar spectrum. Sara has kept this mostly a secret for 4 decades. Now, she is choosing to tell her riveting story—from broken to blessed—to save lives, end stigma, and optimize healing for millions.

Sara is also the leader of Seed Systems, an international consulting collaborative she founded in 1994 to create a regenerative, inclusive, and kinder world. She has worked with over 50 enterprises and thousands of individuals in every sector. A social change entrepreneur, Sara co-founded several networks including The SoL Sustainability Consortium, Women in Power, and most recently, WeTheChange.

Read the Transcript: 

The doctor... And this was the fifth psychiatrist after 25 years, who finally got it right, was dedicated to understanding the complexity of bipolar. So he used a diagnostic spectrum test, which he got from Dr Jim Phelps's book Why am I still depressed?. Those diagnostics are available in the open space on the internet. And he asked me a few simple questions that no psychiatrist had ever asked. Did you have your first episode before age 25? Well, yes I did. And do you have any family history of mood swings? Yeah. Both my mother and my grandfather suffered terribly. My mom called it the cruelest disease. Okay. Family history. And when you were given an antidepressant, did it seem to help but then make you worse? Absolutely. And so with those just a few incisive questions, he was able to diagnose in 15 minutes what it took the rest of the medical world a quarter of a century and missed all along. So it's really so simple if you have the mindset that this depressed person might actually be bipolar and just ask the right questions.