Love Is

Love Is... Is a short book by Mark Ridler on the subject of love based on the experiences both haps and mishaps of the author. It offers some unusual insights into how to heal your life.

About the Author

Mark Ridler was diagnosed with unipolar disorder (depression) in 1998, following the death of his first child. He spent 3 months in Wonford House in Exeter, receiving cognitive behavioural therapy and a series of antidepressants.

He fought to come off the drugs and was basically fit and well for the next 15 years.

Then after divorcing and remarrying, he experienced a sequence of very stressful family-related episodes. These led to increasingly manic behaviour with psychotic symptoms too, throughout 2013.

In 2014, he was admitted to The Cedars, diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed mood stabilisers and anti-psychotics.

The mania continued, resulting in a Section 2 detention, a criminal conviction and divorce for the second time.

In 2015, Mark was admitted to mental hospital once more with continual delusions and hallucinations, believing that Madonna wanted to marry him. He was only able to make progress when he realised that the voices in his head were fiction. Once he'd made the decision not to hear them, then normality returned.

Mark has subsequently achieved good health, albeit with an ongoing underlying depression.