In my line of work I run into many people engaged in the mental health system in different ways. Many people are patients, naturally, but many are the loved ones of patients as well. And some of these loved ones are parents. And some of these patients are children. I have publically stated previously how shaky I am on the concept of children and mental illness; which is to say that I’m very critical of labelling children with a mental illness when we don’t even have formal diagnostic criteria for mental illness in children (except for things like ADHD/ADD). I’ve also said that I’m even more critical of putting children with their growing brains on psychotropic medication when we aren’t even fully aware of what these medications will do to adult brains long-term, let alone developing ones. Nevertheless, parents don’t have to justify their child’s mental illness or the treatment of that mental illness to me or anyone else.

Recently I wrote about how people tend to ignore suicide threats online. And one of the reasons people ignore these threats is because they don't take them seriously. Some people even believe that suicide threats are just a cry for attention.

Self-esteem is a funny thing. I think we’re all born with it but somewhere along the way it gets damaged for many of us. Self-esteem is simply: “a realistic respect for or favorable impression of oneself; self-respect.” And yet many of us feel pretty much the opposite. We feel an unreasonable disrespect or unfavorable impression of ourselves. And mental illness may be one reason why.

Recently a commenter talked about how she felt taken advantage of by a loved one who had schizoaffective disorder. This particular individual seemed to take a lot from his family and gave nothing in return. He refused to shower, help out around the house, pay for anything and would eat out at restaurants with no money and then insist his family come down to the restaurant and pay for him. The person with schizoaffective disorder was being medically treated and the loved one felt that he was just manipulating the people around him. Now, I can’t say what the motivation was in this scenario, but certainly, this commenter is not the only one to have found herself in that situation. So the question is, is mental illness an excuse for bad behaviour?

When people realize they have a mental illness like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, one of the first feelings they have is fear. And there’s a lot to be afraid of. There are the treatment, doctors, symptoms, side effects and then there’s the illness itself. It’s completely reasonable to feel scared in that situation. And in that moment, or possibly in a moment shortly thereafter, the fear of abandonment becomes a reality. A very reasonable and realistic fear is that people will abandon you because of the mental illness.

I have not done a book review on here but that’s because I don’t tend to read help books on bipolar disorder – I write that material, not read it. But recently one such book has landed in my possession and I’d like to take the time to recommend it: Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder – Understanding and Helping Your Partner (second edition) by Julie A. Fast and John D. Preston, PsyD. People often ask me how to help others with bipolar disorder and I believe this book could help partners answer that question.

This article is a continuation from Multi-Polar - The Many Moods of Bipolar Disorder part one.

Recently a reader asked me to describe the moods of bipolar disorder in my own words. OK, I thought, but a lot has been written (by me and others) about depression, mania and hypomania before. But then I thought about it and realized that there were actually many moods in bipolar disorder and just saying there are “up” and “down” moods sort of does a disservice to everyone struggling with bipolar disorder.

As I wrote, some people believe that if you don't have a mental illness, you can't understand someone with a mental illness. I'm not sure this is true.

I have been writing about mental illness for almost a decade now and part of the reason was to try and help people understand bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. And I have succeeded in some regards. I get emails from people quite frequently that tell me how much more they understand about the disease now that they have read my writings. I am tremendously gratified by this. But, of course, I reach a tiny percentage of people and the issue of mental illness stigma still affects us all. And some people, no matter how hard we try to explain ourselves to them, never seem to understand mental illness. Which begs the question: can a person without a mental illness ever really understand what we’re going through?