Growing up I could not understand why people could not keep up with me, or why I seemed more emotional than others, or why I had lots of problems in school.
There is a good side to being bipolar. I took many new jobs in my past and did them with fervor. I had two paper [...]
My name is Julie and I am bipolar. I have two faces, the side most people see, and the other I hide except from my family and special friends. I always want to hide that I am bipolar, because that mental illness “stigma” leaves a small part of me uncertain and ashamed.
I hope telling my [...]
My mental illness started when I was only 21 years old. My mental illness was from giving birth to my first son. I didn’t have a very supportive family at the time to help me through my problems then, plus I had a husband that just threw me in a psych unit so his family [...]
Life for me has not been easy. Growing up I experienced a great deal of abuse. My mother and stepfather had bad anger and drinking issues and regularly beat me for things I didn’t do. I found pleasure in seclusion. Even though it was lonely, it was also safe from the school kids being mean, [...]
Congratulations to Michigan Protection and Advocacy 2008 Advocacy Essay Contest Third Place Winner Terri R. Stonecipher, for her essay: I’m not handicapped, I have a “disABILITY.” Her writing is inspiring! We have reproduced it here with her permission:
I’m not handicapped, I have a “disABILITY” by Terri R. Stonecipher
When I get up in the morning [...]
February 18, 2008 – 7:30 am
In April, 2000, at the age of 36, my world came crashing in on me. I was hospitalized six times that year at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City, Michigan. I hit bottom really hard that year, and for the next three years that followed. I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Severe Depression [...]
November 8, 2007 – 7:55 am
I feel my problems started when I was quite young, at 8 or 9 years of age. I felt pushed out of the way, the black sheep of the family. I was the one who always got the hand me-downs and was always told that I could never do things good enough. I felt low [...]
November 7, 2007 – 7:51 am
I don’t remember just when it was that I found out I had a mental health problem, but I know at first I thought it meant I was nuts. I worried that I might leave the house one day and just forget to return or that I would start to walk around and act [...]
November 6, 2007 – 8:00 am
I thought the world was my oyster. My husband of almost forty years and I were living the American Dream: new boats, airplanes, cars, motorcycles, three beautiful homes, two successful businesses, a successful son who traveled with us to many exotic places. I thought this great living would never end!!
But a series of events occurred [...]
November 5, 2007 – 8:00 am
I am in recovery as far as mental health. In my life I have learned that sometimes outward stress, combined with inward stress, can break an individual mentally. This happened in my life, starting in 1978. I have learned that sometimes one needs to slow down their thinking by taking a tranquilizer. In the world, [...]
