Madness Within

• By JOHN BOYD
• 2theadvocate.com staff writer
• Published: May 19, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:48 p.m.

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Terri Whitley’s book has sat unopened in her father’s house for almost two years.

“The Madness Within,” Whitley’s tell-all about her 17-year battle with a mental disorder, took the Baton Rouge pharmacist and Southern University graduate six years to finish.

The process was therapeutic and terrifying; exhausting and rejuvenating.

But for her father, William Whitley, the book is a wound that doesn’t need to be opened.

Terri Whitley was diagnosed in 1991 with bipolar disorder, an often-joked-about but rarely understood condition also known as manic-depressive disorder.

The condition is characterized by alternating states of mania and clinical depression.

Symptoms of the manic phase can vary from mere excitability to “episodes” that more closely resemble psychosis.

In Whitley’s more severe manic phases, she often believed that either she was Jesus or his second coming. She obsessed over cars — suddenly deciding she needed to buy one, or convincing herself that her father had bought one for her.

Whitley’s first manic episode occurred at age 17 at a college pool party during her freshman year at Xavier University.

Friends say she started crying uncontrollably, then blacked out. Partygoers helped Whitley call her father back in Baton Rouge.

“She was something different on the phone than anyone I had ever talked to,” William Whitley said. “I thought maybe she had picked up a mickey (in her drink) or something.”

Whitley was brought to Parkland Hospital in Baton Rouge, where an initial diagnosis was slow in coming.