Jon Stanley considers himself fortunate among bipolar disorder patients. He eventually responded to the right drug cocktail after self-described “full-brained mania” almost 40 years ago left him naked in a New York City deli, convinced electricity coursed through the floor.
Others face a longer road to medication. Severe mental health care like his was “more art than science,” the retired lawyer remembered being told back then. Doctors would rotate through medicines to “see if anything stuck.” The experience inspired his late parents, Ted and Vada Stanley, to donate hundreds of millions of dollars toward research into treatments for bipolar and schizophrenia during their lifetimes.
