Nigel Morgan sent me this article from the Guardian Unlimited. It's about the way banks over there deal with so-called physical disabilities but don't properly address the subject of bipolar disorder. The thinking is that when you're manic, you're prone to get into real trouble with spending. Then debt collectors get aggressive, which makes things worse. I can certainly attest to that fact. In fact, I defaulted on a student loan and still have bad credit as a result of bad behavior during florid periods of my illness.

But will the bank monitoring a person's spending habits work? What about the right to privacy? Thankfully, it seems that some British banks are taking a progressive approach to dealing with the problem:

The Royal Bank of Scotland group, which sponsors a Mind booklet on money and mental health, says: "If we discover a customer is suffering mental illness and is in financial difficulty, there are processes to help such as dealing with a third party, adopting a softer approach in communications, suspending interest and other fees, not sending marketing material, cancelling credit cards, and accepting lower payments. We would not sell or transfer the debt to another financial organisation."

The illness that banks refuse to recognise