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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Hello everyone. My name is Rick. My apologies for using labels but with them some may be able to connect better. I am currently going through early stages of treatment for what may quite possibly be a life long un-diagnosed struggle with schizophrenia/paranoia schizophrenia, extreme bi-polar, multiple personality disorders, extreme depression, early child, teen and adult psychosis from an extremely early age(possibly onset from birth according to my memories). I’ve always been separated from others, I’ve had speech issues and learning issues(separated from class and studied upon(age 5), held back in school zero interests so and so forth. From there on it became worse. I never excelled in school, I was bullied by everyone all the time(was moved to another school, and still bullied there), Barely holding on to work, multiple relationship failures. I grew up without a father and raised by an intelligent beautiful mother who went through the same exact struggles as I am going through right now. After her passing(age 22) and no family around, I forced myself into a separated world of my own. Kept telling myself “misery loves company, and that’s why I like being alone.” It wasn’t that at all! My mind wanted that and well when you don’t quite realize why you do the things you do it just continues unchecked I’ll be back to finish this story but to be honest I’m a little tired and the focus is becoming difficult I hope everyone reading knows there is a way through this!!!! Believe

If you had symptoms of mental illness as a child, the idea of normality eventually came into question. Nightmares, abuse, acting out, pot smoking, using harder drugs and social isolation overtook my reality. These sufferings, manifesting disease, cast me out from college. Clinical signs of anxiety, depression, psychosis and mania seemed to lead naturally to self-medication.

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Schizophrenia, bipolar, depression all have impacted my family throughout my lifetime.  My older brother had Schizophrenia, my sister and I  suffer with depression and my older son, who is currently in hospital getting treatment, has bipolar with psychosis.  

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My name is Max. I have had schizophrenia for 9 years, and I want to tell you my story through psychological hell to recovery and hope. I’ll tell you at the beginning that beyond giving you an amusing story about my experience, I eventually want to convince you with my story that I discovered something called “Street Epistemology” that is growing in the atheist community, and that it has helped me get better, along with medication and support from the mental health community.

I was born in 1989 to a wonderful family. I have so many fond memories of growing up. I had a big family get together with all of my aunts and uncles and cousins all going over to my great grandmother’s house and having lunch and a good time together. All of the people in my family were very loving and had wonderful bonds. I was close with my siblings, and my brother and I shared a lot of friends. All of the friends and teachers I grew up with, I feel like were wonderful people, and I felt very bonded to many of them. We went on a lot of family trips growing up, and I traveled in a lot of different parts of the United States, and even to Mexico a few times.

I had no particular health problems, and there would have been no way to predict the hell I would go through when I turned into an adult. I never broke a bone, never had a cavity, never had any major diseases, and although i was prone to a lot of viruses, nothing serious was wrong with my health at all. I did have a teacher in about 4th or 5th grade tell my parents that I had ADHD, because I spent a lot of the time in class staring out of the window. I think she was mistaken that this was caused by a disorder, however. I think the truth is that I was a child full of wonder and energy for the world, and didn’t like to be closed up in the classrooms.

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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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Hello. I am Gregory. I am 23.
I have schizophrenia, schizoaffective, bipolar, Lyme, depression, anxiety, and high functioning autism. It seems like a lot. It is. 

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Enough is enough!  The challenge of living with a mental illness has struck me and many members of my family, female and male, and today, I am taking a stand. I will be their voice…for anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and more. I will not walk in shame and defeat for my head is lifted to the sky. I will not let society put us in a category, define us, or mark us as “crazy” or “half cracked”. We have to address mental illness in our global society and aim to defeat it like any other illness of the body. It has no perspective race, gender, or culture and it comes to steal the joy of living on this beautiful earth.

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Poem 33 Voluntary Work Helps My Life

VOLUNTARY  WORK  HELPS  MY  LIFE

I have been doing Voluntary Work for Many Years now.

My Mental Health Problems which are Also,

Mentioned about in my Poetry Book,

“SOME OF THESE MAKE SENSE, SOME OF THEM DONT,

BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT LIFE IS.”

Post Traumatic Stress, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,

Depression not Clinical and Schizophrenia.

Pricing Books for a Local Hospice and working on the Till,

Another Charity Shop Pricing Dvd’s, Computer Games and CD’s.

Welcomer at a Cathedral, telling History,

from Roman Times to the Present.

18^th Century Church near my Address, again talking History,

Which is what my Degree was in.

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And I knew I wasn’t right 

So I planned on going that Friday night 

And I knew I wasn’t okay

Making it the perfect place for me to stay 

See, for most, a mental hospital isn’t a choice 

It’s one of those things where you are left without a voice 

Brought there suddenly against your will

Then before you know it, you are given a bunch of random pills 

But for me, it was where I was supposed to be

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