Coming out

Hi Puggle,

Kurt Vonnegut is quite open about his MI, and "Breakfast..." is his way of working through his personal journey.

He puts it as a matter of having 'the right chemicals' and 'the wrong chemicals'. Which is an oversimplification, but works quite well as plot device.

His son, Mark Vonnegut, has written a book about MI. Its a first-hand account of bipolar. I haven't read it. Its called "Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So."

Welcome, Puggle and thanks to others for your insight.

I've been dealing with (sometimes!) depression for 12+ years now. When I first 'came out' in 2002-03 to close friends and trusted colleagues, I found that fully 80% of them either had someone close to them with a MI or had a MI themselves, either in the past or ongoing. Maybe that's partly influenced by my profession (currently on hold) which I won't talk about here.

Fortunuately, partly because its prevalence is becoming known, mental illness is less stigmatised now than it was when I first admitted to myself that I had a real problem. And there's no comparison with the 1980s when, in hindsight, I actually felt it.

Having said all of that, there's still a long way to go. There will always be a proportion of people who will glibly tell you to 'cheer up' or that 'you've nothing to be depressed about'.

I think part of it is that people who suffer from MI look like everyone else most of the time. This is simultaneously a good thing and a bad thing. On the positive side, we are often free to get on with our business without getting hassled or patronised. But then, because the additional weight we carry is invisible, we are often also asked to do more, at the expense of taking care of ourselves.

I am reasonably lucky in that even at my worst times I have learnt to act in a way that does not indicate the internal struggle. On a number of occasions I have been caught up in conversations with strangers when a person they perceive to have a MI walks in/by. They make comments and I have learnt to tell the cowardly ones who would never say such things to the persons face. My favourite incident of this kind was when a guy turned to the group I was with and said "I think people with MI should be locked up at birth and made sterile". His parents were in the conversation as well, but that was too much for me to let go. Without blinking an eye I turned around and said "I disagree", when he asked why In said "Becuase I have been glad to spend time doing my own things, to have enjoyed the company of amazing people and to have known and to have loved, but as a person with schizophrenia you would have that stolen from me". He went pale and started to try and undo what he had said, you know the standard "Not you" defense, but then the really amazing thing happened, his mother turned around and said "I suffer from depression and when I hear you say that I wish they had steralised me at birth". I hope they talked later and she apologised but damn the look on his face was worth more than words can say! So yeah I can enjoy the step out of the closet so to speak, expecially when it challanges another's perspective.

Woah - well done @nyxsong - so well said.

I don't think people realise how many people in their lives have or had a MI.

I wish I was there to see the look on his face 🙂