When I am in my dark place, I can get settled here. It tells me everything I need to hear to make me believe I belong in this place.
The 2014 NAMI National Convention was an amazing, surreal experience. For four days, people from all over the country came together to educate and learn about mental illness. The entire conference was a smorgasbord of options, from panels on the latest updates in schizophr...
Stigma and the fear of not being ‘normal’ was enough to keep me from getting treatment for a debilitating mental and physical illness for 23 years. Elementary school, middle, high school and college were a constant struggle. Academia was my enemy and I could never catch a bre...
Picture one of those slow motion videos of a tennis ball being hit by a tennis racquet and coiling inward before being released back to its original shape as the ball projects through the air. That’s what mental resiliency is: the ability to “bounce back” from conflict ...
I’ll never forget my mother two days after her suicide attempt. It was the beginning of winter and she had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder . After a stay in the ICU and two days of medication, she was just regaining some clarity when I spoke to her. She knew...
I hear comments all the time: “My place is so perfect. I’m so OCD.” “No, it has to be neat and clean. I’m so OCD.” “You should see how I organized my Star Wars collection. I’m so OCD.” I was born with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder ( OCD ). I struggled throughout m...
Many people don't know how to provide comfort or respond appropriately in times of need or crisis. Instead of listening and taking the time to provide a constructive response, they jump to conclusions. They say the first thing that comes to mind, or in other words, they reac...
Mental health care didn’t exist for me, or at least, that is what it felt like when I was a child. My feelings, emotions and any negative response to them was often discounted as me being a “sensitive child.” Without knowing better, I accepted that I was different, o...
Being hospitalized for a week due to mental illness isn’t exactly anybody’s idea of a good way to spend spring break, but my junior year of high school, that’s exactly what I did. After weeks of angry outbursts, panic attacks, attempts to self-harm and suicidal ideation, my...
When the hospital doors close behind you for the first time, it often feels more like the beginning of a prison stint than the start of a journey to recovery. The immediate deprivation of personal choice and the creature comforts of private life only seem to reinforce this p...
When I received my borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis, my world came crashing down. While I was aware of the symptoms I was experiencing, I didn’t see the disorder within myself, or maybe just didn’t want to see the disorder within myself. As a mental ...
I am a 50-year old American veteran and I am here to tell you about my struggle with PTSD and how biking has helped me manage my condition. I joined the military in 1994 and served for 23 years. Having come from a military family, I was thrilled to serve my country, especi...
This past Sunday was Father’s Day, and it’s had me thinking all week about the legacy of my own father, the legacy I am passing down to my own son and, in general, what it means to be a man. My dad was a paratrooper in the military, then he was a bookbinder by day and a c...
On February 17, 2020, I was at a crossroads, deciding whether I wanted to live or die. After contemplating suicide for two days, it seemed like that was the only answer. I had battled depression for years, but I never told anyone how I was feeling. I was raised to believe...
Each year, more than half a million people arrive at emergency rooms because they are contemplating suicide or because they have already hurt themselves. Despite the care they received, in the year that follows the visit, they are still at a high risk for suicide. Of co...
The television screen goes dark, then flashes red. There’s a scream. Broken glass. Laughter. Then, the image returns. A nurse prepares a syringe. A man in a straitjacket talks to himself, responding to apparent voices in his head. The background music crescendos dramatical...
It was early fall, just past the autumnal equinox, that the fires started. Winds pushed flames through the sunburnt, thirsty hills of Southern California, and it was the ash — gray flakes floating like snowflakes covering the surface of the earth — that I remember most cl...
I arrived at the psychiatric hospital in June of 2019. I had struggled for years with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, and they both worsened after having my two kids. Leading up to the hospitalization, I had been abusing my anxiety medication (...
While dissociative identity disorder (DID) has become a topic of fascination in the media, I have not heard many stories about the condition that represent lived experience accurately. Sensationalized movie plots portray people with DID as dangerous and maniacal. And mo...
The day I turned in my master’s thesis, I woke up early. I curled my hair and applied a generous coat of makeup — even making time for contouring and setting spray. I posed for pictures with a school friend; we beamed, holding our freshly printed and bound 100-page docume...