The Rapids: Ways of Looking at Mania

The Rapids explores how individuals with manic depression can mediate their identities, sense of agency, responsibility, and social being in a world saturated by negative media. Using a mixture of reflections on the self, literary and cinematic representations of mania, and media coverage of celebrities with mania such as Kanye West, Carrie Fisher, and Spalding Gray, the author discusses what it means to live with a diagnosis of "bipolarity" in contemporary society.

There are no easy answers in this book for how people should view or encounter manic depression, particularly as it represents itself across the lifetime of someone diagnosed with the condition. Instead, with insight and empathy, Sam Twyford-Moore opens up and expands the conversation around this highly stigmatised and extremely misunderstood condition.