My name is Amber, I have Bipolar Type 1 with Psychosis. I also have Panic Disorder, PTSD and Fibromyalgia. Despite my diagnosis, I know that I’m not my illnesses. I am married and a mother of 4 beautiful children. My oldest has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Depression, and PTSD. My second born has Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD, my youngest twin girls were Premature at birth and spent 2 months in the NICU, because we were hit by another car while I was pregnant with 2 months left to go. Anyways when I was first diagnoses at 25, I am now 35 almost 36 years old, I thought this illness was my identity. I started to believe irrational thinking like how can I be a mother, will I be able to help support my family? That year I met my now husband who I reunited with.

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My twin sister disappeared in 1982. I was severely abused by both my parents. I was also a gymnast and dancer from age 4 to 14 years old. I am now 37. I am diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Autism Spectrum Disorder, Bipolar, and an eating disorder. I am thankful to a specialized program in my state where I live. The program only has 6 clients and is a program I will be in for the rest of my life. Before entering this program I was in the hospital more than I was out of it. I have currently been out of the hospital for 3 months. I have no family support. I was lucky the 6 years I was in foster care, I was not abused in any placement, but was bounced around a lot. I have lived in many group homes and apartment programs. I live in the Intensive Residential Treatment (IRT) apartments. I have my own apartment with 24hour/ 7day a week in home staffing. This program is not time limited. I have been told I will be in this program for the rest of my life. If I can make it through what I have then there is hope for everyone else. 

I have high functioning autism, lifelong depression, insomnia and PTSD according to the doctors. I’m not sure if I agree. I think a lot of it is just extreme personality traits.

I was isolated a lot as a child because I viewed other kids as wild and dangerous animals that made no sense to me. My parents were also very busy with their own problems. I cried and screamed a lot as a baby and refused to sleep, so they would leave me alone by myself. As I got older they would lock me in my room if I misbehaved, although not for very long.

Other members of my family have similar issues. My grandfather was exceptionally good at mathematics but terrible socially and abandoned his two kids when they were 12 and 14. My aunt killed herself when I was 14 and that has stopped me from committing suicide myself. I saw how upset my family were and I feel too guilty to do that as well.

Most days I do not want to live. I’m very very tired. I know exactly how I would do it and the thought doesn’t upset me at all. But I will stay alive while my family are here.

Humans scare and confuse me most if the time. I was beaten up and raped by two men when I was younger and I felt very stupid for not knowing that they were going to hurt me. After that I tried to study people. have learned to read expressions by drawing faces over and over again and learning all the shadows and lines for anger or happiness or sadness. I can mimic voices and mannerisms very well and have learned responses over the years. I am 32 now and can function well enough to hold a job although people call me a robot sometimes.

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I have come a long way from my first admittance to a hospital. How I have suffered and why I suffer now is not important. What is important is that I take the medications for schizoaffective disorder everyday, seek counsel from mental health professional, do tai chi, and lastly do mindfulness meditation, which all four “keeps me sane”. I work, I go to community college and manage to live on my own.

Greetings.  I am finally able to tell my story of mental illness and how I almost lost my own battle with mental illness and 1 particular story of how one mental health professional failed me.  I have overcome these things and I am ready to speak.  I have applied for law school and it was scary talking about my mental illness in my personal statement out of fear that the stigma would prevent me from gaining entry into law school.  I decided that I could no longer fear this.  If I was going to be the fierce mental health advocate I dream to be, I had to begin to tell my own story. 

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I suffer from a dual diagnosis of alcoholism and depression.  I am now in recovery for alcoholism and am being treated for depression with an antidepressant and therapy to deal with life long issues.  I now work in the mental health field and am going to school to be a mental health counselor.  I very much feel that I have much to offer others who suffer from addiction and mental health issues, although honestly, some days feel I am worse off than those with whom I am working. I struggle daily with thoughts low self esteem and worthlessness and relapsing into alcohol usage!  However, I realize that this will be a daily challenge for possibly the rest of my life.  I want to encourage and inspire others who are also in recovery for addiction and mental illness to find help and support.  There is hope for you if you just take the first steps. 

I wasn’t diagnosed with my mental illness until later in life. This happened in 2009 when I was 53 years old. I was diagnosed with Bipolar. However, I have been suffering with PTSD since my service in Vietnam. I’ve never sought out treatment for my PTSD thus I have been suffering with it on my own. In 2009 I attempted suicide due to extreme depression and wound up in the hospital for the first and only time since being diagnosed. My hospital stay lasted 4 months. Two months were at the local hospital and another two months were at the local state hospital. That is a long story for another time. During those 4 months I didn’t receive a phone call, a visit or a letter from anyone including my family who lives in the area. When I got out of the hospital I decided I would make sure no one else would ever have to go through their tough times alone like I did. So I became a Certified Peer Specialist trained in Forensics and specialized training in helping veterans and their families after serving time in the military with PTSD. I am also an instructor on Crisis Intervention Training for first responders in our area. I also conduct monthly training classes for my employer (NHS) in teaching sensitivity/stigma classes to NHS employees.

I was able to reach these goals in only 4 years so I am extremely anxious as to what I may be able to accomplish in the future. While in the Marine Corps we were taught that no man is ever left behind and that is how I live my life today. On my business card I have a statement that says, “You’ll never walk alone” and that is one promise I will never fail on.

Here you will find a write up I did about the issue of ‘Triggers’, in relation to Complex PTSD, PTSD, Anxiety and the aftermath of abuse. Many times society often feels only accepting to those issues of triggers which our war heroes and veterans are forced to cope through. However, it is the youngest of warriors, our children, who face a battle within what should be the safety of their homes, the love of their parents, which sadly turns into the greatest battle of their life. It is a repetitive battle they live through and endure every single day, possibly even permitting other adults to ravage abuse or use them in deviate behaviors. Yet, when they grow with the aftermath of dysfunction and are set off by a series of attacking triggers from society’s victim blaming and condemning behaviors; this is when we want to lock them in a su them from our children and communication in a successful manner in jobs or supporting any part of their healing. Hopefully those who visit the N.A.M.I. site will share what they learn here and remember, we can teach them a better way in life when we stop ignoring the dark path which past generations have taught us to endure and forced us to carry the ugly family secrets of these deviate abuses. We do not have to accept this any longer, we are a new generation in charge today and we know the risk of suicide from an abandoned abused child. I hope you will find this worthy to share with your readers. 

Thank you,

Patricia ‘Trish’ McKnight

Hi, I am writing to tell my story of a young man, 20 years old living in a home taken from his mother at the age of seventeen and not allowed to see her whenever he’d like. My son has autism and has no voice. I raised him his whole life. I was a stay at home mother. My son was diagnosed with autism when he was three years old. My mother helped me to raise my son. She worked as a clinical social worker for the federal government. I was receiving social security disability due to a back injury and chronic type 1 diabetes. When my son turned fourteen his insurance, was not allowing him to receive much needed services. My mother was receiving excellent medical insurance through the federal government and she suggested to adopt my son so that he could receive better insurance for better services that he needed to receive along with more social security money. After much debate I finally complied and allowed my son to be adopted by my mother for the sake of making his life better. This was in 2009, in Montgomery, Alabama. Within three years, my mother died of colon cancer, and my son did not take her death well. He had extreme behavior issues because he could not express himself, and the only way he could cope was to do self-injurious behaviors. His doctor at the time put him on several medications to try and calm him down. Two of the medications were also used in others as blood pressure medications.

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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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