Category Archives: Advocacy and Legislation

Reflections on 2015

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As I sit back and reflect on my goals and planned projects for 2016, I can’t help but to think about all that I lived through in 2015 and how that has shaped this year’s prospective.

This will be a quick read, I promise.

I learned more about myself in this past year than I believe I have learned in all of my life. I learned that I am more resilient and stronger than I imagined. I learned that psychiatrists and psychologists, though I may hate them sometimes, know more than I do because of their experience. Therefore, listen to them and learn to curb your ego.

I also learned to stop thinking I know better than anyone about my mental health because although sometimes it may be hard to hear, I need to listen to what others around me have to say about my mood and behavior.

And finally, I learned to take my medication each and every day. I have learned over and over again that I truly do need my meds in order to prevent a manic episode. Yet, I continue to get off them because I know better, right? Wrong!!! So, I learned in 2015 after 9 years since my initial diagnosis, that YES I really truly do need to take my medication every day consistently and continuously. Ok, got it.

And you, my fellow reader and confidante, what did you learn from 2015???

Should We Lock Up the Sane?

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A new study — the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study — found that those living with classic mental illness — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression — alone are not likely to use guns when they commit acts of violence:

“For the small group of people with mental illness who are at risk of committing gun violence, improved collaborations with the criminal justice system are clearly indicated,” the researchers stated. “However, directly targeting mental illness as the major driver of gun violence is misguided. … Prior violence, substance use, and early trauma are more likely to contribute to subsequent violence than is mental illness per se. In this regard, the politically inspired haste to focus gun control efforts on people being treated for a mental illness, rather than on people with demonstrated indicators of violence risk, such as restraining orders related to domestic violence, seems particularly misdirected.”

This contradicts the latest psychophobic reign of error that comes upon the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. It isn’t the mentally ill who shoot people, but those who have no psychiatric diagnosis. So what are we going to do about them?

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Buzzfeed Petition

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I am deeply disturbed by the recent quiz on Playbuzz that purports to inform its takers whether or not they are bipolar. For this reason I have composed the following petition on change.org which I ask you to sign and circulate among your friends:

Buzzfeed calls itself the largest humor site on Facebook. It reaches nearly 500,000 people, many of whom are impressionable teenagers and young adults.

Recently, it published quizzes purporting to identify whether the test taker was bipolar or OCD. There were many problems with these quizzes.

The first was that many of the questions — especially on the Bipolar quiz — had nothing to do with the disease itself. People with bipolar disorder who have taken the test have been told that they don’t have the disease. Others who don’t have it, have been told that they have.

Second, they make light of syndromes that wreck the lives of those who struggle with them.

Third, the results may give the people the illusion that they have the disease when they don’t or don’t have it when they do. This can lead people to unwisely abandon their treatment or eat up valuable time at the psychiatrist assuaging their fears that they have the illness when they do not.

Fourth, the test has no medical disclaimers to the effect that it is no substitute for accurate diagnosis by a medical professional.

Fifth, the staff at Buzzfeed has been disingenuous about these harms and refuses to remove the tests from their site on the grounds that they are “just entertainment”.

We who live with mental illness live with the hardship of stigma. We are treated like children. We are told that we are faking our symptoms or that they “really aren’t that bad”. Buzzfeed’s arrant insensitivity must end.

Please sign the petition at the site.

I was forced to grow up

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At age 20, I was diagnosed with Bipolar I after a manic episode mixed with psychosis which sent me straight to a psychiatric hospital. Well not really a hospital, rather, a rehabilitation center in Georgia. No, I’m not from Georgia nor have ever lived there, but it just so happens that I was visiting a friend when I went “manic”.

But don’t be alarmed, this is not an account of my (mal) treatment in the rehabilitation center or in the jail I was held for 5 days because of all things, my mania began at the Atlanta airport. No, this is about how I was forced to grow up after my experiences. How I could no longer consider myself just a care free college girl with no worries, but rather, an adult woman with a mental health diagnosis, which was tough, at best.

I could not accept my diagnosis, nor did I want to admit that perhaps I needed help from someone other than myself. As a psychology major I should have known better than to fall prey to stigmatizing myself and my diagnosis, I thought “But I’m not crazy.” How ignorant and little of me to think such a thing.

And after yet another stint in a psychiatric ward in the Bay Area, literally three days after returning from Georgia, I was convinced I had Bipolar I. It wasn’t the psychiatrists who convinced me, nor my arsenal of daily meds that did it. No. It was my mood swings. My constant flow between happy and sad. My to and fro, that’s what convinced me I had Bipolar I, and yes I needed help.

I became my own advocate, then. Seeking help and resources in my community. Standing up for myself whenever necessary and becoming an adult, in a manner of speech. I never thought I would have to grow up so fast and so soon, it was in the summer before my Senior year in college.

I felt as though the Universe had screwed me over, big time. And after wallowing in my self-pity, I got it. I understood. Sometimes it takes a huge life change to make you appreciate life better and make you a better person. It’s life’s way of putting you back in your place and giving you perspective. And wow, did I ever get perspectified! Yes, it’s a new word, I just made it up because I can do that. 🙂

 

 

We Should Stop Using Mass Murderers as Our Poster Children for Change

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It’s going to happen again with the same reaction by the media. Maybe we will wake up tomorrow morning and see the report in our morning newspaper; maybe we will hear about it from a coworker at lunchtime; or it will be the lead story of the evening news. Mass murder. Mentally Ill Man. The words will be slung together and dished out to a public which has been bred to believe that mental illness and violence are strongly correlated. Politicians, doctors, family members, and activists will devise plans to cope with the problem. It happened with the Virginia Tech shootings, it happened with the recent Germanwings crash. Autism, bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia have all been implicated at one time or another. The mentally ill cannot be trusted, goes the drumbeat. Schizophrenics and bipolars are killers.

Statistics show that about 3% of the mentally ill are violent. We are ten times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than perpetrators. Yet when we are portrayed on television or the movies, sixty percent of the depictions commit crimes, especially violence. So coupled with the way news outlets spin stories about mass murder, the general public believes that we are ax murderers and serial killers.

Some reformers use this fear to drive some very specific agendas, namely destruction of our rights to privacy, forced medication, and the resurrection of mental hospitals. The objective is to control the mentally ill. They might argue that this is the best we can get in a society with our values, but that is a weak defense of some very problematic and questionable policy changes.

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Why We Shouldn’t Let Our Loved Ones Do the Talking about Stigma

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square850Glenn Close is a woman who I admire for her dedication to her sister and her resolve to upend stigma. When Jessie Close was 51 years old, Glenn drove her to McLean Hospital in Boston where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Their commercials questioning the labels applied to mentally ill family members and their relatives are known to millions. We have every reason to admire and respect her for her work. But recent research suggests that maybe family members aren’t the best ones to be talking about stigma.

The research has nothing to do with the political issues surrounding mental illness. A pair of researchers looking into the rise of a culture willing to accept same sex marriage outline a successful strategy that we who live with bipolar disorder and other organic brain dysfunctions can employ:

Michael LaCour, a UCLA doctoral candidate in political science, and Donald Green, a Columbia University political science professor, have demonstrated that a single conversation can go a long way toward building lasting support for a controversial social issue. In addition — nearly as surprisingly — the effect tends to spill over to friends and family members.

The key is putting voters in direct contact with individuals who are directly affected by the issue.

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Writing Helps to Heal

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I know it sounds cliche because we have all heard it before, “Why don’t you write about it? It’ll help” Yet, few of us really take that advice and implement it. Most of us take it as psychiatric mumbo jumbo, and continue with our pain alone for fear of burdening our close friends and relatives, those we have left anyway.

I was one of those non-believers in the power of writing and it took me a good nine years after being formally diagnosed to take finger to keyboard and just type. I started with a Twitter. Yes, I took to social media with my angst because if I was gonna share with the world, I was doing it loud and clear and on the internet. And lo and behold, I found a whole community of people like me, fellow sufferers and survivors of mental wellness. I could not have been more surprised at feeling a sense of camaraderie on the internet of all places. I was so overwhelmed that I started crying after one of my Tweets got retweeted, a personal Tweet I must say.

Maybe it sounds lame to you, but after that first reTweet, I was hooked on writing. I quickly found venues to express my thoughts and opinions, and somehow for some odd reason, people were listening to me. And not only listening, but commiserating, it was as if I had come home, finally.

Now, whenever I feel any slight anxiety, mania, depression, whatever, I take to writing. I love it. Everything about it. And I love and appreciate the people that have given me the chance to use my voice for good.

Bipolar Disorder in a Time of Hate

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Faces

Shortly before my hospitalization for a mixed state came the 2004 election. I crashed and crashed hard after the results. Politics is a fascination of mine but obsessing about it is not my friend. When my expectations are high as they were in 2004 and the hope I feel is unrealized, I take it very hard. The mix of anger and disappointment plus certain medications I was taking for depression at the time pumped me up into a mixed state. One day, when I had enough of it and of other life issues, I texted my last will and testament to my wife and sat down on a log to study my veins for the right place to cut. A timely phone call from my psychiatrist saved me.

The 2004 election was cordial compared to what has happened since 2008. Elements on both side but especially the right have been whipped into a frenzy by their respective leaders. We hear stories of blatant racism and sexism, two faults that have been hidden until the recent elections. We see them not only in the political arena but also in the news media and on the streets of our cities. Some such as Fox News are instigating their viewers to greater and greater heights of denial and fear while others just give the demagogues air time by covering them without comment. We see black men strangled or shot dead with no justice leveled against their killers. And respect for the police — even the good cops — sinks lower and lower.

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