I have been struggling with mental illness from a young age. I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, adhd, ocd, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, psychogenic seizures, and a learning disability. I also am I recovering addict. I would like to spread my story to those in need to show them that the darkness does fade as long as you have the strength to flip the light. The goal is to inspire everyone but if that is not possible I aim to touch at least one person.

Hello, I have always thought that sharing my story with the mental health community is important to bring hope to others that are just like me.

I’m a 37 year old divorced mother of two boys. I have been in therapy of some kind or another since I was 7 years old. Mental illness runs in my family as well as substance abuse addiction. I believe I was born with my many disorders that progressed and worsened as I got older, abused illegal drugs, prescribed medication and had my children. In my early childhood I showed all the many signs of OCD. I also grew up in an extremely chaotic family where my mother suffered terribly with her own mental illness that was never acknowledged or treated and an emotionally absent father. My two older siblings coped with this by using and abusing drugs and my older sister was put into rehab when I was seven. My older brother simply moved away and is still an addict today covering up his own mental health issues. My younger sister was extremely emotionally disturbed and would act out violently towards my parents but especially towards me. She would later become a drug addict for many years and thankfully entered recovery 4 ½ years ago.

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Mental illness runs in my family four generations.I hear voices and see things that are not there which is caused by my schizophrenia.  I have bipolar disorder because sometimes I am depressed and sometimes I am manic. I have PTSD because my biological father was not in my life and my mom could not take care of my mental illness due to her illness. I have borderline personality disorder because every time I get close to someone they leave or hurt me. I have obsessive compulsive disorder because I want everything to be perfect. I am a psychopath because I like to plan for the future. I do burn bridges because I am protecting my innocence and soul. Because of this stuff I am a terrible mom. Yet music, history and my family and animals help me. So hopefully that will help. A friend is someone that knows all about you, yet loves you just the same. My religion also helps me. I have zillions of blessings everyday.

I self-harmed for many years and attempted suicide at 19.

I have a daughter with Borderline Personality Disorder and a son with Bipolar Disorder.

I’ve been living with Chronic Migraine Disorder for almost 3 years.

I was also diagnosed with depressive disorder as a complication of chronic illness in April 2015.

Sure, it’s logical that someone living with daily pain would be depressed at times…or often. How could one living with that NOT get depressed? I’ve lost friends, lost being able to spend much time with family, lost ground in classes, lost the ability to do simple things without paying with pain…lost so much.
The past few months, though, have been particularly rough. It’s been a real struggle to care about much of anything, to want to get out of bed and fight through another day, to just keep going and hang in there.

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            My name is Jennifer and I am a recovered mental illness survivor—

            I have endured severe mental illness for over half my life.  During that time, I suffered from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

            Due to the depression, my behaviors ranged from excessive crying to excessive sleeping to suicide attempts.  I felt feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness.  All I thought I wanted to do was die.   But in fact, what I really wanted was help with overcoming my severe sadness.

            During my manic states, I endured impulsive, spontaneous, and irresponsible behaviors.  I felt on top of world.  I felt excessive amounts of energy.  I had racing thoughts.  I had delusions of grandeur.  I’ll be honest.  It felt great to be so high, but it is also very dangerous.  Risky behaviors can lead to much endangerment of self and others.

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For the last seven years I have struggled with my mental health with triple diagnoses of Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar disorder (with substance abuse) and until up to a year ago was leading myself on a trail of self destruction.  The psychosis, whether drug based or not, led to my mental unraveling and lost me jobs and housing and nearly all hope. 

People within the UK will know how inadequate the mental health services can be - how they can save you or wreck you and I had a bit of both.

From inpatient stays to home treatment to community mental health teams to drug and alcohol teams to therapy - I have slowly gone through them all. 

In through my experience I decided to train as a mental health nurse and gain something positive out of my illness to help and support others in bridging the gap between the mental health services and their clients. It has been painful, feeling like you should take a side between the two whilst desperately trying to connect them both. 

I see the suffering that I once suffered, I see the terror on the faces of clients that I remember and I’ve regularly been told to leave the patient at home and come in as the future professional. I tried this and relapsed because I failed to separate them and got better when I realized that I shouldn’t have to. The client and the nurse comes hand in hand with me and sets me apart from other staff but gives me more insight with who truly matters - my patients. Which is why I will always support any movement in the NHS towards Peer Support as a recognized profession.

I have overcame so much in my life, childhood trauma and abuse,foster care, drug addiction, homelessness, incarceration, and mental illness. In 2016 I sought treatment for bipolar disorder, I also decided to pursue my undergraduate degree in psychology on a pursuit to become an Licensed Professional Counselor, I want to provide affordable treatment to those that need it most in our society. I am now in graduate school studying mental health counseling. I could not have done this without my medications, they saved my life and changed me for the better. 

I have bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and anxiety. I have struggled with mental health illness since I was a child and because I was misdiagnosed with depression at the age of eleven, have suffered for quite some time.  I also struggled with alcoholism for a few years, having inherited it from my Dad.

I’ve been on many medications, seen several therapists and psychiatrists, made numerous suicide attempts, and self-harmed. I felt broken. I wasn’t thriving and I didn’t expect to survive. Then there was a miracle. I conceived my daughter. She was born in December of 2008.

I needed to at least live for her sake at that point, but I was still barely surviving. It was the spring of 2015 when I decided to quit alcohol and to go into the hospital because I was severely depressed and suicidal. The doctor changed my medications and a few days before my discharge date the doctor made me realize that I was still in a deep depression. I still needed help. I decided to do ECT.

It was a major decision but it changed my life. The combination of ECT, medications, and therapy have helped me onto my road of recovery. I’m not 100% and I still have my episodes. However, have my treatment team, my friends, and my family to guide me and help me. I’m not alone.

Hello, my name is Leslie, and my husband has bipolar II disorder/borderline personality disorder. To the outside world, we are a typical family with ups and downs, behind closed doors, we are much more complicated and often tormented by this illness. My husband and I have been together for the better part of almost 19 years. I had a two year old son from my first marriage, and he had a three year old son (who we didn’t know was his until 1999). We married in 1998, had our first son together in 1999, and our second son in 2000. We were a young blended family on a roller coaster of major mood swings, fighting and confusion. I couldn’t understand why Jason would be laughing and relaxed one minute and without warning or explanation he would get irritated and lash out.

For years we fought and argued about his behaviors and what I perceived as a simple lack of self control. His drinking was much more prevalent and I had become very depressed, hopeless, and quite frankly I’d become a class A bitch. Oddly enough, neither of us wanted to give up, we always managed to find enough joy with each other and love for each other that we stayed together and kept trying despite all of pain, but we were continuing to cause severe damage to each other.

In 2004, I learned he’d been self medicating with drugs. This had been happening for a couple of years and I immediately grabbed hold of that as being the root cause of all of our problems. Not knowing where to turn, I reached out to his parents. Jason was lost and suicidal, I was angry and full of hurt and confusion. We went to see a dr and he evaluated Jason. He determined that Jason was not severe enough to be admitted to suicide watch but mentioned the possibility that Jason had bipolar disorder. Not knowing much about the illness, I began to research it and the symptoms fit Jason’s behavior to the letter, but neither of us knew what to do about it.

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Everyone struggles with something in life. Some struggle for brief periods of time and some struggle every day. I belong to the some who struggle every day. Since I was 5 years old I have constantly struggled with mental illness. I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, ADD, ADHD, PTSD, and attention deficit Disorder. My dad, step mother, and Step Father physically abused me for most of my life because they didn’t understand what I was going through and my Mother was the only person in my life to try to help me through everything I was dealing with. Unfortunately I did not trust anyone around me due to how I was treated at home and because I was constantly bullied at school because I was different. Eventually the abuse I was facing at my step fathers house led to me going into a state of shock and I tried to hurt my mother because I was so out of it and thought she was my step father. I was 15 at this point and was detained. 

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