The course of my life changed in 2001-2003, years shortly after I graduated with my undergraduate degree from college. I had always thought I’d spend my work-life trying to help people think better about God, religion, and their lives. During this time span, however, I began to suffer from bipolar disorder, a form of mental illness more serious than, say, depression or ADHD.
Nothing in my life before had prepared me to deal with this situation. Growing up in conservative evangelical churches, I had been taught to view modern psychology and psychiatry with suspicion. My parents softly reinforced such bias at home. Suddenly, the field became my lifeline. Without medication, I could not live a normal life; indeed, without medication, I couldn’t work and might even be homeless on the street.
I decided to learn all I could about my new situation. After encountering mental illness, a lot of folks enter mental health professions. Though I read about psychology, I became more interested in medicine. I ended up going to medical school but could not continue because of conflicts between the sleep schedule required for clinical work and the sleep schedule required for my mental health. Instead, I moved into medical research by using my computer science degree in a field called biomedical informatics.
I’ve struggled to find the right medications for my ailment. The ones that work best seem to have the most side effects. The ones with the least side effects don’t keep me stable enough. Right now, I’m caught between a medication that works really well and controlling its side effects of high cholesterol, diabetes, and liver troubles. For now, my wife and I are choosing the medication and trying to minimize the effects of side effects through diet, lifestyle, and other medications.
Mental health and mental illness lie in the category of something that concerns us all but something that we don’t delve into deeply. We all want to prevent school shootings and social ills, but beyond crying for better mental health after each malady, we move on without any reform or change. In all seriousness, how many of us reflect on mental health as something more than less stress? I bet most, though not all, would raise our hands.
Biomedically, we’re in a better position than ever before in treating mental illness. Despite side effects, we have relatively effective treatments for serious mental illness like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder for the first time in human history. Sadly, we lack the infrastructure to help those homeless on the streets. We can’t deliver the “last mile” of getting effective drugs into bodies. Without this “last mile,” I might be among their number wandering from encampment to encampment instead of working a relatively comfortable job with steady health insurance.
It’s easy to overlook mental health and mental illness. I think deep down, many of us, myself included, irrationally feel that stress and these diseases are defects of character. We want to think we’re all in control of our faculties and impenetrable to attacks. Helping those needing help equates to admitting that we’re vulnerable. My mental health and my medications must take priority – more than my marriage, family, job, religion, etc. I wonder what it’ll take for us to build a better mental healthcare system. The knowledge in research and policy is there, but the collective will is weak.