To a greater or lesser degree, everyone is subject to mood swings, or mild forms of cyclothymic disorder. Because our life-style increasingly cuts us off from our natural biorhythms, some of us find it especially difficult to adjust. This can result in more severe cases of cyclothymic personality disorder, covering the range from minor symptoms to serious psychiatric diseases, such as bipolar disorders (formerly known as manic-depression), or uncontrollable or desperate behaviour.
Psychiatrists today have a better understanding of the neurological and psychological mechanisms that help explain such behaviour.
The author describes new forms of therapy that can help overcome cyclothymic disorders (these cyclical depressions resist the usual antidepressants as well as classical forms of psychotherapy) and proposes a wide range of solutions: individual methods, common sense, working on oneself.
Knowledge of recent scientific and therapeutic research is limited — yet it can change the lives of patients and their families.
This highly accessible book, illustrated with numerous examples, explains in clear, simple terms the neurological and psychological mechanisms of cyclothymic personality disorder.

Nicolas Duschêne is a clinical psychiatrist and teaches behavioural and cognitive psychotherapies. He has followed numerous patients with bipolar disorders and their families for many years, in both his private and his hospital practice, in Montpellier, France.