I am not happy. People who know me well, know this about me. Sure, I act happy, because what choice do I have considering societal norms, but happy I am not.
So the question is, can a person with bipolar disorder by happy?
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Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to give a presentation on mental illness to a group of ninth-graders through the Bipolar Babe project. I spoke about stigma and my personal story of mental illness. I told them all about my bipolar disorder, my diagnosis, treatments, treatment failures, vagus nerve stimulator, electroconvulsive therapy and more. And at the end of the presentation, the kids had a chance to fill out feedback forms, and one of the words they used surprised me – inspirational.
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I get a lot of feedback on my writing. I like feedback. Some of it’s positive, some of it’s negative, but it’s always interesting to know what other people are thinking of my writing.
But one of the types of comments that drives me absolutely nuts goes like this, “I lived with a bipolar person for 20 years and I don’t understand why people with bipolar are so angry,” or they’re “so violent,” or “so manipulative,” or “cheaters,” or whatever.
Here’s what drives me crazy about it – living with someone with bipolar disorder does not make you an expert on people with bipolar disorder; it makes you an expert in one person. Not all of us.
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At least once a week someone asks me what medication I’m on or what my bipolar treatment plan is, but I have a policy not to talk about my treatment plan or medication. I typically won’t even get specific about my experience with specific medications. I don’t tell people what medications I’m or what my treatment plan is for a good reason – it’s no one’s business but mine and my doctor.
I get a little peeved that people ask me about my medications and treatment plan because it’s private people. But people think that just because I’m a writer I’m a public commodity and people should get to know whatever they want about me. Well guess what, you don’t. You get to know what I choose to tell you, nothing more, nothing less.
And really, why is it that people want to know about my bipolar medication? I’ll tell you why – either they want to copy it or they want to judge (like judging ECT) it and I have no interest in facilitating either of those things.
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If you’re not following the Bipolar Burble blog on Facebook, you likely missed it but we had quite a conversation last night about an image that’s going around Facebook. The image says, “STOP PSYCHIATRIC DRUGGING OF KIDS.” The image is of an innocent, sweet-faced child holding up a sign with the words. The image is attributed to a user on Facebook whose political views are listed as “anarchism.” Righty-then.
Regardless as to who made this image, the image itself has been circulating in, you guessed it, antipsychiatry circles. (I won’t bother drawing lines between antipsychiatry and anarchism, but, you know, I probably could.) Not surprisingly, one reader with a mentally ill child took offense to this image and all the passing around of it.
This image suggests that:
In other words, it stigmatizes both parents of, and mentally ill children themselves.
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There is a bone of contention in the mental health world. Well, OK, there are many, but one of them is the terms “mental illness” and “mental health.” It seems more politically correct these days to say “mental health” vs. “mental illness.”
For example, people have mental health conferences, not mental illness conferences. There are mental health policies, not mental illness policies. And so on. I guess it’s the glass half-full theory. Mental health is more positive than mental illness (and don’t get me started about the term “behavioural health”).
But there is a problem with this whole rosy-colored view. It completely ostracises and further stigmatizes people with a mental illness.
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It is an unfortunate truth that many mental illness patients won’t take their medications at one time or another. This is known as treatment noncompliance or treatment nonadherence, if you want to be a bit more politically correct.
And also unfortunate is the fact that when a person with a mental illness refuses to take their medication they almost inexorably get sicker. People with bipolar disorder who won’t take their medication, for example, often become manic and then wind up hurting themselves or someone else and end up in the hospital. And watching this happen, as a loved one, is extremely painful.
So is there anything you can do when a person refuses to take their medication? Is there anything you can do about treatment noncompliance?
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This morning I was watching Perception, which is a TV show wherein the lead character has schizophrenia. He, like most of us with a mental illness, is trapped inside his head – trapped inside his mental illness. Oh, he functions and everything, but his mind is still trapped inside a sick brain.
And this is how mental illness is. My friend called it the ball and chain. He says I do really well for a person who’s always weighted down like that.
And this morning, one of the characters in the TV show said, “I spend a lot of my time finding puzzles hard enough to get him [the lead character] out of his head.”
When I heard that, I burst into tears.
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One of the most popular things I’ve written here is a piece called, Saying Goodbye to Someone with a Mental Illness. I think this piece is very important as it highlights the fact that you can’t stand beside someone just because they have a mental illness. Sometimes it’s simply an unworkable situation and you have to take care of yourself by putting some distance between you and the person with the mental illness.
Unfortunately, some people took this as an indication that I believe that you should leave people with a mental illness.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, of course. The vast majority of people with a mental illness are people just like everyone else and are completely reasonable with which to be in a relationship (of whatever type).
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