Brighter Days: Learning to Manage my Bipolar Brain (Inspirational Series)

Growing up in a deprived area of North East England in the 1970s, alcoholism and violence played a huge role in Karen's everyday family life.

But things were only to become more difficult when, at the age of seventeen, she began her battle with anxiety and depression, an illness nobody recognised. Her reality became a devastating, deteriorating state of existence, and no one seemed to understand what was happening to her.A number of harrowing, recurrent and often bizarre episodes – including a phantom pregnancy, a nightclub assault, and an unhealthy obsession with a celebrity – eventually lead to Karen being sectioned under the mental health act and taken into hospital. It then took years and many more dramatic relapses before doctors would finally give her the correct diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Karen Manton was born and raised in Grangetown. She secured her first full time job working for the local authority, where she experienced her first symptoms of mental illness. Ignoring the signs, she remained at work and went on to receive a promotion. At the young age of 23, Karen decided to retire on ill health. Karen is a proud mother of two beautiful children who have shown support and acceptance of her illness. She is now happily married and wrote a book in the hope that her story will show others that they are not alone.