If you’ve explored the International Bipolar Foundation website, you’ve noticed that we encourage those diagnosed with bipolar disorder or depression to explore—even study– these disorders. Armed with knowledge, the informed patient feels far more empowered when it comes to healthcare and lifestyle decisions.

Because of the extent and variety of treatments, we think even keeping a laptop file or even a spiral notebook that tracks your medications, dosages, reactions and feelings helps you get the precise treatments that work best for you. This notebook is a great place to organize your research as well.

Now, when we say this, some people blow us off, leaving the big choices to their doctors. Others make a decent attempt, keeping up with their meds and treatments well and researching to some extent.

And then there are the research junkies who just can’t get enough knowledge in any field, let alone their mood disorder. You demand up-to-the-minute information from the very best minds. Are you one of these? If you are, here we’ve complied some websites where you can get the most recent research on bipolar disorder.

www.allconferences.com This site helps you research conferences for any topic. Once you click to the specific conference’s site, you may get lucky enough to find a file or PDF of their proceedings, a podcast of the keynote speaker or even a video packed with the most recent discovery from the finest minds in the field.

Tips for getting Conference Materials
When you get to a conference site, you get to see topic titles with intriguing names. When you click on the titles, you’re asked to sign in with your password. Well, you don’t have a password for that conference and you’re not a member of the organization running it (e.g. the International Conference on Bipolar Disorder is run and members of the International Society for Bipolar Disorder or ISBD for which you need specific credentials to join).

To get around this obstacle, you have three options: 
1. look the author up on www.pubmed.gov and download similar work there (you 
may have to pay);
2. call the organization and ask them directly how you can get the information. (often, a nice Public Relations person or library will just ask for you email and send it to you directly.)
3. ask your local librarian if the library can download it for you; and
4. go to a local university library to see if you can get the information with the access they have.

None of these are sure fire strategies, but they may help you get the information for free.