Author: Greg Rennie
To disclose or not to disclose, that was my question. A few months ago, for the first time in 27 years, I publicly disclosed I live with bipolar disorder in an article for a business magazine. I held my breath and took the risk as a healthcare professional and an entrepreneur, hoping it wouldn’t impact my career. We’ve come a long way, but stigma and discrimination of mental illness still exists and surprisingly exists in healthcare.
Ten years ago, a prominent newspaper journalist in my city of Toronto wrote an article about mental health and disclosed that she lives with bipolar disorder. At the time, very few people came forward publicly about having a mental illness. This was way before celebrities like Demi Lovato, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Russell Brand went public. I was a CEO and entrepreneur at the time and just launched a startup that was one of Canada’s first online therapy companies, Focus Mental Wellness. Her being candid and open about having this illness was shocking to me and I gave her a great deal of respect for taking a career risk. In addition to shock, I instantly felt guilty as I was keeping my diagnosis a secret, even to some family members and friends, let alone the public.
At the time, I wasn’t ready to say that I have bipolar disorder, a condition that I was treating as a therapist for 10 years at that point. More importantly, I had business partners, potential investors, and I felt very, very vulnerable. Earlier, when I was working in a psychiatric hospital in Ontario, colleagues of mine who struggled with mental illness issues burned out and had to go on a leave of absence. When they returned, they were treated by the supervisors and coworkers differently, given a less responsible position as the view at the time was if you were a therapist and had a mental illness, it automatically meant you were unreliable, unpredictable, and could have a negative influence on the patients you treat.
It’s a sad reality, and here’s some proof. A few years ago, in 2021, in a journal article about health care and the hospital environment in the Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences, the authors stated the systematic review revealed that the attitudes associated with mental illness in employees are mostly negative and, in turn, the behaviors that coworkers and supervisors direct towards mentally ill individuals often lead to both open and subtle discrimination, reducing the quality of the work experience for those individuals. They also stated the responses of managers to workplace mental illness are often paternalistic and protective, and their responsibilities of the organizations are reduced to doing only what is required by law or by internal policies and procedures. Unfortunately, this is what I witnessed at the psychiatric hospital I worked at, resulting in me keeping tight-lipped about having bipolar until last year when I no longer worked for a hospital and was no longer a CEO of a company.
The prevalence of bipolar disorder among entrepreneurs is quite high. In an article in Small Business Economics, their self-report survey in 2019 examined the prevalence and co- occurrence of five psychiatric conditions among 242 entrepreneurs and 93 comparison participants. This is what they found: entrepreneurs reported experiencing more depression, 30%, ADHD, 29%, substance use, 12%, and bipolar disorder, 11%. The prevalence of bipolar disorder in the US and Canada in the general population is approximately 3%. Despite the statistics, many successful people live with a condition Elon Musk alluded to having bipolar in a recent social media post.
People with bipolar, according to Sherri L. Johnson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, stated recently, they show high levels of creativity and the ambition to tackle big goals. A few months ago I decided to talk about my diagnosis because there’s low risk for discrimination in my career at this point. I still feel a little guilty that I waited until it was safe, but my experience in healthcare held me back.
So when I did publicly disclose, how did it go, how was it received? There were a lot of positive comments on social media and even though my clients were often surprised, they thanked me for being candid and open. My motivation wasn’t just that I have it too. For 27 years, I have also been in therapy and take medication every day and still have challenging lows and highs. They’re more manageable now. I’m currently stable for more than 10 years with no hospitalizations. Yes, I do have 20 years of professional experience treating mental illness in my clients, but having personal experience provides me more empathy and understanding, especially for family members, as two of my sisters also have bipolar. All siblings in fact, in my family have bipolar.
When I do tell a client about my personal experience, it’s usually when they share that they have fear of not being able to hold down a job, have healthy relationships, and being on disability for life. I tell them that there are many people that you wouldn’t know have bipolar. It isn’t just something that people talk openly about. It’s not visible and successful people are reluctant to disclose. What I learned from this process is that those with bipolar who are well, stable, euthymic and successful, not just in business, but in relationships, in life in general should, if they are willing to take the risk, speak up. We need to let others know that even though we live with this condition, it doesn’t define us. It doesn’t limit us.
The content of the International Bipolar Foundation blogs is for informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician and never disregard professional medical advice because of something you have read in any IBPF content.
