By Margaret Fitzgerald After my initial manic episode at eighteen, my friends were making purchases for their dorm rooms and packing up for far away colleges. I was chronically depressed, which often happens after coming down from a manic episode. Friends were saying...
Author: Margaret Fitzgerald My family knew little about serious mental illness when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Hindsight is 20/20. What follows are what would have best helped me be successful in life before and after my diagnoses. Many...
Author: Dayna J. Of course all women are not bipolar, but this writing prompt (in honor of International Women’s Day) asking how my experience as a woman has affected my mental health really made me think. Perhaps this disorder is easier for women. As a woman I...
Author: Sasha Kildare What if every Monday through Friday you were trapped in a room for eight hours with only 10 minutes in which to escape it? Unfortunately, I got to experience this particular brand of misery. I just left the worst job I have ever...
Author: Savannah Spurlock Zillennials face a great stigma when it comes to mental health. Society says it’s the way we were raised that led us to our ultimate downfall. They say it’s the technology we use, the lack of education we received, and the work...
Author: Jasper James Naturally, when I think of the first day of school, I experience anxiety and extreme nervousness. One of the tricks I like to use is mindfulness to get me through my anxiety. I simply take the “butterflies in my stomach” feeling and ramp it up to...
Author: George Hofmann I’m the father of a 9-year-old girl who will be starting school in front of a Chromebook this fall. I also have bipolar disorder, and sticking to a strict routine has been crucial to my recovery and stability. That all changed last spring. Our...
By Petra Dujmic Petra pictured with members of her school newspaper. “Neuro nada”—“Neuro hope” in Croatian. I put the two words together when I was a child, sitting on the concrete steps of our family’s sweltering summer house in Croatia. My crocs had started to feel...
By: Sydney Waltner More than half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness in their lifetime. But not everyone will receive the help they need. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, only forty percent of adults and fifty percent of...
By: Jamie Park Dear Minister of Health and Welfare, I am writing to express my grave concerns over how the nature of mental illness is generally perceived in my country, and how such perception, in turn, has directly penetrated the legislative process in enacting or...
By: Elena Hirsch Dear Congressman, Illness of any kind can be devastating, causing pain and suffering not just for the affected individual, but for family, friends, and all of those around him. But while insurance companies are quick to provide a treatment route for...
By Nathan Gagné People with mental illness often feel as if they matter less than the rest of the population or that their illness is an impenetrable handicap. Margaret Trudeau has struggled with bipolar disorder in the duration of her adult life and speaks openly...
By Eric Corona Fiercely, vigorously, and ingeniously Ted Turner made a name for himself in the television industry with all odds stacked against him. Mr. Turner has bipolar disorder, which has caused periods of depression and suicidal thoughts; his father struggled...
By Angela Li As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.” Considered to be Germany’s greatest literary mind of the modern era, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe certainly was a whirlwind of chaotic creativity. With such a...
By Wendy Ward, Executive Director, The Youth Mental Health Project My first experiences with mental health conditions are the reasons that I co-founded The Youth Mental Health Project. I believe that by changing the way we talk about and how we act with regard to our...
By Kimberly Lifton No one would ever say, “It is just cancer. Get over it.” So why does society stigmatize people who suffer from mental illness? How come when people have a mental illness, society perceives them as if they are monsters? Why can every other organ in...
By Jennifer Peterson Like a shadow, it cannot be shaken. It hides in corners and feasts in the dark, preying on its victims from afar. It alters their minds, forever distorting the way in which they view their own self worth. It devours confidence, crumbling it into...
Dear Friend (On Your Birthday), We met almost 17 years ago, we dated in Grade 10, we had fun while it lasted (all of 6 or 7 months), and went through the awkward phase were we couldnt be friends because exes werent friends in high school. But, that didnt...
When there is a big storm that will knock out your power you prepare for it, right? Typically, you keep water, a flashlight, and some food that doesnt require cooking because you might lose all power. To some extent, its the same when preparing for a low...
Being a teen is rough. That’s the understatement of the century. Add having bipolar disorder on top of that and life just gets that much harder. I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 22, (I’m 28 now) but the signs were starting to show when I was in high school. It was...
I was in the tenth grade at the age of 14. I was never popular. I stayed in the background and kept to myself or at least attempted to. My peers bullied me and I gave up on fighting back. I took it, internalized it, and never spoke of it when I got home. What was the...
By Su Bin Cho In just four hours, this Facebook post received 110 thousand likes. I saw the same post copied and pasted onto many other pages appear in my newsfeed because so many of my fellow Korean friends were tagging each other in the comments. It read: “These...
By Eric Shan Last month, I was fortunate enough to have been able to interview Kevin Breel, a comic who travels across the US to share his story about struggling with mental illness. One of the most vexing things he said that night of his performance was in response...
By Parag Kappor Bipolar disorder is a challenge faced by people around the world. The stigma has already ruined too many lives. A great passage from the novel Ender’s Game, perfectly describes the situation: There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will...
By Kristen Shim President Bill Clinton once said, “Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.” For the 5.7 million Americans living with bipolar disorder, for the millions of undiagnosed people living in third-world countries, and...
By Muslim Hasan We have often heard about how advanced and superior the world will be in the future. Much has been talked, written and filmed on how better a place it would evolve to be then; advancements in technology, knowledge and everything in general would lead...
By Elga Theresia All of us have perceptions on seeing things. However, our perceptions are not always consistent with the reality. Finding characteristics distinguishing people from other member of society who we regard as ‘normal’, we often stigmatize them. Stigma is...
By Genevieve Green I walk into class, my shield a thick blue binder filled with my countless ideas and thoughts; my nature in disorganized paper form. Inside hide the pictures of relief- Cobain, Poe, Whitman, Twain. Others. Success stories. Reminders of what is...
