How I Learned to Find Hidden Strengths in My Bipolar Disorder: Shots

A few brave professionals have publicly shared their journeys with bipolar disorder – including a psychologist Kay Redfield Jamisondoctor Justin Bullock and entrepreneur Andy Dunn. Recently, as the Acting Surgeon General of California, I chose to join their ranks.

To help dispel stigma and spread hope, I shared my own long journey to diagnosis and recovery in a keynote address at the National Alliance on Mental Illness conference. speechsocial media posts and a staff writing in the Los Angeles Time.

Despite my early fears that bipolar disorder could derail my path forever, I shared that I now attribute much of my professional and personal success to the lessons I learned from my mental health journey.

This revelation has reached millions and given me the gift of dialogue and deep kinship with hundreds of people affected by mental illness who have reached out to me – many of whom sound like mine from years past.

Many wrote that they had never seen someone in a high profile public role with serious mental illness speak out. Some, in the midst of the most difficult moments of their own journey, wrote that my words had “saved their lives” and helped them to feel less alone, ashamed and hopeless.

I cried because of the vulnerability people showed me and their all-too-recognizable raw truths.

For example, one parent described their teenage daughter’s struggles with bipolar disorder:

“It has been a difficult journey for us and her,” they wrote. “Thank you… for making us feel a little less alone and giving us hope that [our daughter] has a good life ahead of him!”

My most fervent hope – and the reason why I chose to “come out” – had been precisely to reach those who were still searching for the path to healing. To help them know that there is is a way forward. May a difficult diagnosis or a long period of struggle not prevent them from living their dreams – to keep the hope that with the right treatments, a full life is possible.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. More than one in five American adults live with a mental health condition — and about one in 20 suffer from a serious mental illness like bipolar disorder — with rates soaring during the pandemic. And it can take years to receive the right diagnosis and find the right treatments that bring us back to our full functioning and potential. By suffering, we run an increased risk of dying ten at 20 years earlierincluding by suicide or because of chronic illnesses such as heart disease.

Stigma and its cousin, internalized shame, end up compounding many difficulties on the road to recovery, leaving us feeling undeserving and alone in our struggles – and leading to discrimination in the workplace and in opportunities and access to care. Many find that experiences of stigma and discrimination are more painful than the mental illness itself. In fact, partly because of stigma, more than half of adults with mental illness are not Processing.

Sharing our stories allows us to break down this stigma and drive home the commonalities of our experiences – that with treatment, positive outcomes are not only possible, but likely.

But the messages I received underscored how much more we need to go to achieve equal access and acceptance of mental health and physical health treatment.

An Indian-born business professional wrote about the taboo-like stigma that limits access to treatment in our culture.

“Growing up in India, talking about mental health was traumatic, and I saw family members in great pain who were never able to ask or seek help,” she wrote. [emphasis added]. “My mother, now deceased, would have [benefited] If she had known, she could have sought help, been cared for and lived a fulfilling life.”

Like the old me, countless others today are not free to live as themselves, free from the discrimination and unfounded judgments that tarnish their careers.

“Bosses and others told me I had no potential because of what I struggle with, and I ended up internalizing it,” one woman wrote.

I’ve also heard from dozens of medical professionals, who are especially prone to hiding their diagnoses and not seeking treatment.

Stigma is embedded directly into regulatory processes in medicine like those of state licensing boards, which can take punitive and paternalistic approaches to policing clinicians with mental health conditions, even when they are well controlled.

A mental health professional wrote about the need to hide his bipolar diagnosis during his training. “I hear daily people despising and shaming those who have this disorder in [the] field, even colleagues, people I learn from in my clinical training,” they wrote. “I hope that one day I can fully convince myself that my success as a clinician will not be reduced to this disorder

A medical student living with bipolar disorder wrote, “I felt silenced and often like I didn’t belong in this field. You reminded me that I belong here and that my diagnosis will not prevent me from succeeding as a doctor. .”

As a result of these outpourings, I have never been more convinced that to dispel the stigma associated with mental health, professionals who feel comfortable must speak our truths – to make it clear that mental health issues, especially the most serious are treatable. This is essential to help change prevailing stereotypes and often pejorative cultural associations related to mental illness, and to improve access to care.

Public opinion on mental health problems is still largely rooted in extreme images of people in the worst possible condition. When we make room to understand the diverse individual mental health journeys, including recovery, we embrace nuance and context.

When we join our disparate voices and share our stories – from disease and well-being – we can and will be dispel stigma, shame and stereotypes, and achieve lasting change in the limiting and incomplete ways that many currently perceive those of us who suffer from mental illness.

In my own life, I’ve come to see my mental health journey as a driver of my superpowers – as a doctor, a leader, and a loved one.. As my son’s namesake, Rumi, once wrote, “The wound is where the light enters you.”

My journey has given me a deep understanding of myself and shown me my own capacity for strength and vulnerability. It gave me a strong motivation to implement the boundaries and self-care strategies needed to stay healthy, as well as an empathetic ability to support others in their most vulnerable times.

Many readers have written that hearing my insights has allowed them, some for the first time, to reinterpret their mental health experiences as activating their most unique assets.

“As a person living with [complex post-traumatic stress disorder]i…never thought this could be my superpower,” one reader wrote.

“Now, after almost a decade, [I] can clearly see as you do that bipolar has not fundamentally changed me or realigned my understanding of myself, but it has been one of the greatest gifts I have ever received,” another wrote.

Of all, I am so grateful that my revelation gave me the chance to forge deep connections within a global community and join a movement – ​​with a shared belief in reclaiming our stories.

Working together, I have real hope that we will be end mental health-related stigma and discrimination and support greater access to treatment throughout our lives. So that our children can live in a world that honors and enables their full potential.

Dr. Devika Bhushan is an equity-focused pediatrician and public health professional who served as the Acting Surgeon General of California. She is an Indian-American immigrant and mother. She is on Twitter and Instagram as @DrDevikaB.