You might remember Karen Tyrrell from her last interview wherein she talked about writing her way to mental health wellness. Well, this time Karen gives us advice on recovery and insight into the role a carer can play in bipolar disorder wellness.
People ask me about suicide, and I talk about suicide, all the time. I talk about suicide warning signs and suicide attempts and getting help for suicidal feelings.
And, of course, one of the big things I say in bold, underlined letters is that if you’re feeling suicidal you need to tell someone. You absolutely, positively need to reach out for help.
But let’s face it, it’s not easy to admit you’re suicidal, even to yourself, let alone to another person, so how do you tell someone you’re suicidal?
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Recently I was talking to a friend (also with bipolar) about personal responsibility. She is a very successful, high-functioning person and one thing we agreed on was the importance of taking personal responsibility for your bipolar disorder.
Personal responsibility means a lot of things to a lot of people but I’m specifically talking about taking responsibility for your actions – even when they are mostly as a result of bipolar disorder.
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Today on the Bipolar Burble blog I’m pleased to offer an interview with Prakash Masand, M.D., the CEO and founder of Global Medical Education (GME). Dr. Masand has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, serves on editorial and review boards for psychiatric journals and is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. Dr. Masand offers his view on psychiatry, mental illness and stigma.
Bipolar disorder feels like a curse. It feels like somewhere, somehow, I’ve ticked off an old, horror-movie, crone and she’s cursed me to 1000 years of suffering. 1000 years of grating, clawing, slicing, pounding agony.
Any why do people get cursed? People get cursed because they did something wrong. I must have done something wrong. I must have done something unspeakably wrong. And I hate myself for it.
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The way I see it, bipolar disorder presents a problem with motivation (you know, among all the other bipolar problems). Many people in acute bipolar moods suffer from too much, unrestrained motivation or no motivation at all. Either way you slice it, it’s a bitch.
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Recently I wrote about why people with a mental illness shouldn’t be denied access to guns. My argument is, essentially, that it is a violation of their rights to judge the mentally ill based on a medical diagnosis and, in this society, we judge people based on what they do and not their medical conditions.
Some of the commenters on this post brought up the fact that with access to weapons, a person with a mental illness may be more likely to commit suicide. For example, about half of all people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide and certainly, an attempted suicide with a gun is very likely to be a completed suicide.
However, this doesn’t change my opinion one bit. While I have written and written about suicide and suicide attempts and I have said that, as a society, we should aim for zero suicides, that does not mean that we should violate people’s rights to do it.
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Ah psychiatric medication. I know; it’s really what we all love to hate in mental illness. Psychiatric medication can fix you up or pull you down and many of us have experienced both these things.
But there are more risky psychiatric medications and less risky psychiatric medications, in my estimation anyway. And one of the major ways to judge risk is based on history.
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Today marks the launch of HealthPlace’s new campaign that encourages people to Stand Up for Mental Health. You can learn all the details about the Stand Up for Mental Health Campaign here.
So what does it mean to stand up for mental health? Well, basically it means making mental health issues and mental illness visible. It means talking about mental illness. It means talking about people who have mental illness. It means showing your support for others. It means not being ashamed of your mental illness.
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