by Joan in New York
I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 49. What triggered my diagnosis was a colleague's suicide. My mother had a mental illness and was suicidal, but I had never disclosed her illness to anyone except my closest friends.
by Anna Marie in Ohio
At the age of 76, I now look back at an eventful, though too often painful, life. I can only speculate about the role of mental illness (bipolar disorder) on those challenging years. What degree of the decisions, turbulence or even the successes can be attributed to my mental illness?
by Addie in Florida
My depression was most likely learned behavior from a mother who drank everyday and a father who seemed depressed and despondent. I remember arguments and fighting as a young child. Then my parents divorced. This started my fears and insecurities. I remember being center stage, then on the back burner.
by Katharine in Washington, DC
I'm a healthy sibling of a chronically ill sibling. When I was 12, in the period of three months, my brother went from an extremely happy and healthy 15 year old to suffering bipolar so severely that he needed to be hospitalized. Because of the clarity of the break--one day healthy, one day completely out of contact with reality, I never have questioned the reality of mental illness as a disease, just like I don't seriously question the existence of diabetes or breast cancer as medical diseases.
by Amber in Oklahoma
There is not a time that I can remember that I was not depressed. As a small child, I can remember crying and crying, but not knowing why I felt the way I did. Other children did not seem to have the same feelings that I did. I became known as "sensitive." By the time I was 17, I was not only sensitive, I was suicidal. I had decided on a plan and was scared. I told my mom that I was planning on killing myself if things in my life didn't change. She immediately sought mental health care for me from our primary care doctor.
by Anela in Hawaii
My mom had post-partum depression after she gave birth to me. The nurse had to beg her to hold me for five minutes a day. I guess I always felt unwanted when I was growing up. At age four, my mom and I moved to start a new life. Around the same time, my uncle began molesting me during my family visits. He abused me until I was 8. When I finally gathered enough strength to tell my mother, I thought the abuse had ended. After I told my mom, my uncle molested me one last time. I told my Aunty about the abuse then. After I told my aunt, the abuse from my uncle finally did stop. My mother enrolled me in an adolescent group therapy program. I thought they would fix me. They didn't. My uncle went on with his life as normal, and I lived in an endless void of pain.
by Lilian in Florida
When I look back I can now see that I started to show symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) when I was ten years old. My symptoms did not become obvious to the people around me until I was 14 and then even longer before I was misdiagnosed at the age of seventeen.
My mounting unstable emotional outbursts were what seemed to draw people's attention the most. I was incapable of controlling my ever increasing emotional states that would come and go at the drop of a hat. The yelling, screaming, crying, and throwing things for the smallest of infractions. Things that would not upset most other people, I went into hysterics over.
by O in Pennsylvania
My life has been surrounded by what I consider one form of mental illness or another. I was given up by my mother at a year and a half (abandoned). The former sounds better, but then again isn't that one of the biggest things we learn about mental illness, as we move through life--to talk about it with pretty words. Reality says my mom ran out because of her illness, leaving me was one of the reasons for her illness, therefore helping to create and contribute to my own.
by Barbara in Louisiana
Unbeknownst to me, mental illness has shadowed me all of my life. I looked at a picture taken of me at the age of three and compared it to one taken at the age of twelve...the comparisons were shocking. What happened to the adorable child in the taffeta dress; the one full of promise and life? How did she become the sallow, skinny teenager with the darkened, haunted eyes?
