The Uninvisible Podcast recently interviewed me, Natasha Tracy, and, honestly, I’m honored. Lauren Freedman, the host of The Uninvisible Podcast, gave me a chance to talk about what it’s really like to live with bipolar disorder and my personal history battling with the treatment of bipolar disorder, and, quite frankly, I made her laugh out loud. We taped the podcast at the HLTH Conference, where we both received WEGO Health Awards. If you’d like to know more about my personal story and what made our sound tech sit up in rapt attention, this podcast is for you.
Recently I talked to a doctor who reminded me that patient-blaming in mental illness is alive and thriving. For those of you not familiar, patient-blaming is when you, the person with mental illness, the patient, are blamed for the lack of treatment success. Unfortunately, this idea is actually baked into medicine’s nomenclature. People say things like, “I failed that medication,” or even, “I failed chemotherapy.” People know the intended meaning, of course, they mean that those treatments failed to make those people better. But the idea that language even exists in medicine really sets the stage for patient-blaming in mental illness.
I have considered, over the years, whether doctors care about patients. There are arguments on both sides of this one and, I admit, recently, my interactions with doctors would suggest that they don’t. But these are only the experiences I’ve had with doctors. So, when looking at them en masse, do doctors care about their patients or not?
Men’s mental health is the topic today. This piece is written by preeminent mental health speaker, Mike Veny.
Men’s mental health is in crisis, especially in America. The number of suicides is continuing to rise in our country and the statistics are scary. White men alone account for almost 70% of the suicide deaths each year. We need to begin to address men’s mental health so we can help them get the help they need before their challenges become a crisis.
Physical pain can affect suicidality and depression, of course, can affect one’s desire to commit suicide.* Both of these are seen in chronic illness. Those with a chronic or acute illness that causes great pain can cause a person to want to take their life and, of course, we know that about half of all people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide — mostly because of depression. (Physical illnesses may, themselves, lead to depression as well but we’ll skip that possibility right now.) I might suggest, however, that physical pain and depression** affect feelings of suicidality differently.
There are problems when you care what other people think of you. And the thing is, we all care — at least a little bit, at least at some point in our lives. It’s natural. We want other people to like us. This is biological. If people like you, they are more likely to protect you when a panther attacks or make sure you have food when it runs low. Caring about what others think of you literally may have kept you alive, historically. But in our modern-day, there are major problems with caring about what others think of you or of what you do.
Most people will lose consciousness during a suicide attempt and, assuming they survive, it will be quite a jolt when they wake up after a suicide attempt. I know, I’ve been there. I remember the feeling (or, more accurately, feelings) of waking up after a suicide attempt. For some, it is grateful joy, for others, it is the darkest of disappointments. I think, though, waking up after a suicide attempt changes you no matter what. I also think that lessons can be learned at this time.
(Note: If you have just attempted suicide, this post isn’t for you — this post is.)
Last week I did a podcast with Shelomo Solson. His podcast’s purpose is to help teens through those challenging teenage years. His podcast with me focused on my troubled teenage years, as well as my bipolar and depression, suicidality, self-harm, coping skill recommendations, and many other dribs and drabs.
Bipolar has had a big hand in making me who I am today. That’s just a truism. But is this actually a good thing? People often say they are thankful for everything they have been through because it has made them who they are today. In fact, it’s a new year and people are saying this all over the place. But can you be thankful for bipolar because it made you who you are today?
Many with a disability want to know how to work for themselves. This is understandable. With a disability, working in a structured environment can be almost impossible and the flexibility of working for yourself might seem like the answer. And working for yourself with a disability can be an answer but it’s definitely harder than it sounds. Here, I’m going to talk about how I started working for myself with bipolar disorder, and my current thoughts on disability and working for yourself.
Recently, I started looking for mental health-improving gifts. And while you can get something generic as a gift for mental health (like the popular weighted blanket) I want to point out some gifts really targeted at mental health, mental illness or chronic illness. Read on to learn about gifts for those with mental illness, their loved ones or those who just care about mental health (in other words, these are gifts for everyone).
“Trauma-informed care” is a semi-new buzzword that is heard all over right now but trauma-informed care gets a lot wrong when it comes to bipolar disorder (and other serious mental illnesses). I don’t say this because I don’t think trauma-informed care works — I think it probably does. But like anything, it only works for a certain population; and, like with anything fashionable, right now (look, it has its own conference) they are trying to shoehorn it onto every population. And when it comes to bipolar disorder, trauma-informed care gets a lot wrong.
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