I Support Mental Illness Awareness Week

In 1990 U.S. Congress established the first week of October as Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) in recognition of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ efforts to raise awareness for mental illness. This year between October 2^nd through the 8^th, people from all over will stand together to bring a collective consciousness to this issue that is often misunderstood.

MIAW is especially important this year as severe budget cuts threaten mental health services in many communities around the country. People who do not receive treatment often end up in hospitals, shelters, in jail, or even dead. Most importantly, this is a week where we fight stigma for serious mental illnesses such as major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

This is a cause that is very close to my heart because I have been diagnosed and living with bipolar disorder for nearly thirteen years. Everyone experiences their mental illness in a different way, and mine has had its bumpy moments, peppered by even harsher moments, and then thankfully capped by growth. I do know that I am among the lucky ones who have an incredible support system. I have always had ample health insurance and the financial means to pay those premiums. I have a loving family with endless patience in helping me heal when things take their down turns, and I am blessed with friends who have made me a part of their lives even when I am a less than desirable companion. I understand that not everyone is fortunate enough to have this kind of endless support. This is my opportunity to stand up and remind people that everyone deserves the kind of backing I have had in my life.

I read somewhere today that the only reason that people like me support Mental Illness Awareness Week is to drum up sympathy for myself, since I am clearly one part of the 25% of people who have a diagnosable mental disorder who are considered the “worried-well.” This phrase displeases me in the worst way. Anyone who has ever experienced a bout of depression so awful that they contemplate no longer living at all understands all too well the “worry.” Those of us who manage to come out of it a little better and tell our story are not any more “well.” To undermine the cycle of pain and recovery by using the demeaning moniker is a disservice to everyone. We are not the “worried-well.” We are the survivors. We have seen hell and have returned to life. We know pain yet live with the faith that things will get better, and I am living proof.

I am proof that treatment works. Drug therapies work, and talk therapy works. Together, they have saved my life. The thought that there are people out there who do not have access to these necessities is deplorable to me. The idea that communities are cutting the necessary funding to maintain basic mental health care is unacceptable.

I have been unfortunate enough to experience the ultimate price of mental illness, and that is the loss of life by suicide. I lost my younger brother at the age of eighteen when he took his own life. I will spend the rest of my life fighting for the opportunity to stop just one person from ever leaving the world in that way again; to stop just one family from feeling the pain of loss that we felt when we lost my brother.

Am I attempting to drum up sympathy for myself?  Not at all. I don’t want your sympathy. I want your support. I want you to stand beside me and say enough is enough. Do the thousands of seriously mentally ill people locked up in jail or in a psychiatric ward of a hospital deserve our utmost support? Yes they do, but so do the so-called “worried-well” who very well could be two moments away from being there themselves. If you know anything about mental illness at all, you know that things can change in an instant.

So, take my hand and stand up with me this week in supporting Mental Health Awareness Week. Visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness (http://www.nami.org/) to see how you can help. Together we will make it better. Lives depend on it.

World Suicide Prevention Day-September 10, 2011

This will be just a brief post to announce my support of this very important day of the year. On September 10^th, I will be supporting the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) on World Suicide Prevention Day. This day is part of the weeklong Suicide Prevention Week occurring September 4^th– 10^th.

On its website (http://www.iasp.info/index.php), the IASP states its dedication to “preventing suicidal behavior, alleviating its effects, and providing a forum for academics, mental health professionals, crisis workers, volunteers and suicide survivors.” They are not only avid supporters of lifesaving measures in preventing suicide, but a wonderful reference for those thinking of suicide or touched by the after effects of another’s completed suicide.

As many of you know, my life was forever altered with the loss of my younger brother, Kevin to suicide in 1998. Although the years are long since losing him, not a day goes by where I am not affected by it. Suicide Prevention Week is my opportunity to remember him in a productive way in sharing the effects of suicide on the family and friends a person leaves behind.

If you are a Facebook user, please consider virtually “attending” World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10^th to show your support. You may visit that page at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=216451091704034 to participate.

Thank you for all of your support and kind thoughts, and I look forward to sharing with you in the coming week.

Best wishes and love,

Riki

SWF Seeks CAP (Competent Adult Psychiatrist)

Single White Female seeks Competent Adult Psychiatrist. (Those not covered by my insurance or who have leather couches smelling of mothballs and insanity need not apply).

Seeking out a new psychiatrist is never easy. The psychiatrist-patient relationship is the most sacred and intimate one I know of outside of the bedroom. (And don’t get me wrong, it should stay that way. If it’s not…then you have real problems).  It has recently become time for me to seek new representation, for lack of a better way of saying it, and I set about my arduous journey methodically.

I started in the most logical place- my insurance company. After all, if the provider isn’t covered, I cannot afford the care and it becomes a moot point, right? So, off I go to the website of the insurance carrier that the state of Arizona has chosen to represent its employees in sickness (you may do your own research if you need names) and sought names and addresses of qualified clinicians. The website seemed pretty straightforward and produced an impressive 22 names.

I’ll spare you the three weeks of calls and call backs and cut to the chase. Out of 22 names, only seven were actually currently practicing psychiatry and accepting new patients. The rest were a hodgepodge of out-of-practice shrinks or family physicians that do not actually see mentally uneasy patients.

Out of the remaining seven, I actually got an appointment in the near enough future to make it feasible and booked a morning meeting. Dr. Freeman (names have been changed to protect the totally inept) welcomed me with a cool handshake and a “Nice to meet you Mrs. Cleveland.” We entered his very bare and antiseptic office and he sat on his left leg like a child before putting on his serious doctor face.

The next hour and a half- yes, ninety minutes- was like pulling teeth. He asked me to “please construct my illness from diagnosis to present, including all medications taken and reaction to them.” Um…well…seriously?

I was diagnosed at nineteen years old (if you do the math that’s fourteen very long years ago) in a manic state, followed by a lot of medication tweaking. That alone isn’t truly conducive to remembering medications with unrecognizable names and their dosages, much less how I reacted to each of them. That was swiftly followed by losing my only brother to suicide, which resulted in being drugged up even more, then a series of ECT treatments, which (please forgive me if I’m wrong-you are the professional here, right?) result in memory loss as well.

He mentioned over and over again to “Mrs. Cleveland” (although we clearly covered in my history that I am not married, not ever have been) that he is unable to help me if he does not know everything about my past treatments. I dutifully offered to get him my full records from previous doctors, but that suggestion was met with clear disdain, and it was very carefully explained to me that other doctors simply do not take the kind of detailed, careful (ahem- anal) notes that he does, and he “rarely finds them helpful in any way.”

Well, then. How did I ever find myself so lucky as to have landed my bipolar ass in the only competent psychiatrist’s office with no carefully detailed personally taken records on me? Dr. Freeman couldn’t believe it either.

After a long silence and some heavy sighing (on his part- not mine), he got right to the point. “Well, Mrs. Cleveland, I am not sure how you came to be sitting in my office today, since my specialty is child psychiatry.”

Whoa! Back the tuck up here! A CHILD psychiatrist? Of the many thoughts that flooded my brain, three stood out to me. First of all, why the hell did my insurance company send me to a clinician who does not treat adults? Second, why the hell did he wait until after that agonizing ninety minutes to reveal his “specialty” to me, when I clearly walked in the door as a 5’6” woman with no parental escort? Third, and most importantly to me, if this man was so clearly unpleasant and unbearable to a grown woman in charge of her own care, how in God’s name did he relate to children?

In the end I took away some good from the craziness. Yes, I was unbelievably frustrated to have taken time out of my life to indulge this man in his sadistic patient history techniques. However, he did make a very good point. It is very important for me to go back in any notes I may have from my experiences (most likely in the form of personal diaries and journals) and gather all the details of my reactions to medications tried in the past I can. He was probably right in that doctors have different styles and practices that may not translate well to another. The best way for me to take control of my care is to be my own advocate. Thank you, Dr. Freeman. Point taken.

Secondly, I did walk out with a referral to another doctor who actually specializes in adult psychiatry that happened to be covered by my insurance. According to Dr. Freeman, they have similar styles and expect a lot of background information from their patients, but somehow I feel more prepared to enter into my next appointment armed with as much personal documentation as I can dig up. I am quite serious when I say that I took away the importance of being my own advocate.

Looking back on the experience, I do feel as though I should have been sent to “time out” in the corner with a dunce cap while being told “bad patient!” Dr. Freeman may specialize in children’s issues, but it is clearly because he has no earthly clue how to relate to an adult. I can only hope that he is an entirely different professional when someone underage walks in the door.

The “New Normal?”

 

Please tell me this isn’t the “new normal.” It was one of those days where getting out of bed was a challenge of the utmost difficulty, and even a warm shower didn’t remove the grimy film of crankiness from my body. Everything around me screamed annoyance. The cats crying for food grated on my nerves; the too-tight jeans cutting into my tummy were saddening my resolve; the sprinklers watering the concrete sidewalks on my way into work made everything a slippery mess, and of course my gate-access card would not let me into the garage, so I had to “tailgate” another car to park. All of that and it wasn’t even 8:00 a.m. yet!

Unfortunately, this has been my experience for the past few weeks. Everything seems to go wrong, and nothing seems to line up for me. Although I hate to say it out loud, I’m unfortunately feeling a bout of depression. I know it happens, but this time of year with all of its new beginnings and fresh starts sometimes overwhelms me more than the past holiday season ever did. I’m feeling all of these expectations to be new and better, but don’t have the will to make it so.

Two posts ago I was all happiness and joy about a new start and my “goals” for the New Year. Now simply reading that post makes me very, very tired.  And overwhelmed. Not to mention feeling very foolish as well. I know better than to lay out an outline of that magnitude so early on in the year in a rush of optimism. It’s usually far better for me to set goals one at a time, very simply, and without fanfare. I know that it is usually better to share goals with someone else so that you feel more accountable, but sharing them with the world was a little too much accountability for me.

Please don’t get me wrong; life as I know it is going remarkably well. I still have gainful employment and a steady income, my family, my boyfriend, and my physical health. It’s just that the heart lens through which I see all of that is distorted. Somehow it has become a kaleidoscope that has fragmented all of the perfect wholes and made them into mixed up pieces that don’t seem to add up.

I know from experience that this is not a forever-state. This feeling of gloom and being out-of-place in life is temporary. I might even read a kind word or see an uplifting image in mere moments that breaks the kaleidoscope’s hold and returns my heart lens to complete. Or a good night’s sleep will restore my faith in myself and the world around me.

Thankfully I know that this too shall pass. This is not the “new normal.”

Confessions of a Nice Girl

My name is Riki and I have a secret. Well, it’s sort of a secret and sort of a condition. I guess you could say it’s a conditional secret. Conditional on how you know me. Are you my boss? Yes? Then you don’t know. Are you my lover? Yes? Then you may or may not know. Are you my family? Yes? Then how close we are determines how much you know. Are you my friend? Yes? Then  you ought to know.

 

 

It’s funny, because if this condition were a physical ailment, people would understand. When you break your leg or get cancer, people are sympathetic and helpful. The well-wishes are straightforward and heartfelt. Even if someone has never had your particular ailment, they have a built-in compassion for your predicament. Becaue this condition is mental, there is no straightforward sympathy. There is only doubt and contempt toward something so minsunderstood.

 

 I’m not sure exactly when it all began, but I know that it started slowly and then took up speed and eventually drove me crazy, and then back again. The story I have to tell doesn’t always make sense. I can’t even make sense of it sometimes, so I know it won’t make complete sense to you. It won’t always follow a proper chronological order either. I don’t remember exactly when things happened sometimes. It’s not your typical story of glamour, or of true love, or a great mystery, although I’ve found a little of each of these along the way.

 

It’s funny looking back on it how high things looked for a while and how low they really got. Even knowing what that hell looks like I wouldn’t take my experience back. In some twisted way I needed everything that happened to me. It all had to happen for me to be where I am today. Everything happens for a reason. Fate. Kismet. Whatever.

 

At first I thought I was just moody. Being female makes it so easy to blame yesterday’s bad algebra exam and today’s fight with my boyfriend on PMS. Heck, now they even have an extreme form of PMS called PMDD for those of us who go truly mad during our periods. It’s documented female craziness. Check it out, really. The farther along I got the more I realized that I was not a case of PMS gone mad. There was no way to blame my moods and my behavior on wayward hormones. We had a much bigger problem on our hands.

 

 So I’d like to share the experiences and the moments that have shaped my life so far as a young woman with Bipolar Disorder. I’d also like to take you along on my journey of everyday discovery as I learn to navigate the rise and fall that has become my life. I hope that they entertain someone, educate someone, and uplift someone.

This is a new year, and after twelve years I am ready to share this secret. It is a time for new beginnings and new revelations. It is a time for growth and renewal. It is my time.