According to NAMI, bipolar disorder is a mental illness that causes dramatic shifts in a person’s mood, energy and ability to think clearly. People with bipolar experience high and low moods—known as mania and depression—which differ from the typical ups-and-downs most people experience.
As with all mental health conditions, people with bipolar disorder often experience stigma.
According to Karl Shallowhorn, stigma exhibits itself in a variety of ways and leads to people not seeking help and being afraid to share about how they are feeling with others.
“We are focusing on specific mental health disorders for the next few Facebook Lives so viewers can learn about these conditions and to dispel many of the myths that surround them,” Shallowhorn said. “It’s important for people to understand more about these topics so they can be more sensitive to the needs of the people in their lives who may be living with a mental health challenge.”
Shallowhorn will moderate the Facebook Live event on March 19 at noon focused on bipolar disorder. Featured panelists are Danielle Bernas LMSW, Director of Refugee and Immigrant Center for Healing, Jewish Family Service of Buffalo & Erie County; and Kelly Dumas, LMSW, Founder and CEO, DUMAS R.I.S.E. Providers, Inc.
Danielle will share her personal experiences with bipolar disorder.
National Institute of Mental Health indicates that individual with the disorder may have manic episodes, depressive episodes, or “mixed” episodes. A mixed episode has both manic and depressive symptoms. These mood episodes cause symptoms that last a week or two, or sometimes longer. During an episode, the symptoms last every day for most of the day.
It is estimated that bipolar illness affects 2.6% of the U.S. population age 18 and older every year. (National Institute of Mental Health) and it is found in all ages, races, ethnic groups, and social classes.
Ashley Franz, Community Relations & Outreach Manager, NAMI, discusses how stigma has impacted their mental health journey.
“Because stigma is so insidious and pervasive, even at my ‘best’ or ‘most healthy,’ I can’t escape the audacity of people and their opinions or thoughts on ‘recovering’ from mental illness in today’s societal context (late-stage racial capitalism),” they said.
“Even people I must assume mean well have unhinged one-liners, based on assumptions about mental illness that are designed by, and perpetuate, poor outcomes.
“Recently, I held my tongue as a colleague went on about how different I am from a volunteer of ours. What they meant, I think, is that they’re surprised I could have the diagnoses I do, given the work I produce, and how I articulate myself professionally,” they said.
bipolar illness affects
%
of the U.S. population age 18 and older every year.
*National Institute of Mental Health
Franz notes that people with mental illness diagnoses face homelessness, incarceration, substance use issues, poverty, unemployment, and experience violence at higher rates than non-mentally ill peers. People with mental illnesses are expected to navigate a hostile world without tangible resources, judged and blamed for their “inability” to do so and then isolated from the resources that can support them.
“When “eliminating stigma” means wielding our labor and experiences to convince people to see us as fully human, I worry mental health advocacy loses the forest for the trees.
“Stigma is a cultural biproduct of (and justification for) a real social structure that has kept mentally ill people out of our communities since the period of institutionalization in the 1960s,” they said.
According to Franz, The Community Mental Health Act was inadequate in ensuring adequately resourced communities and unintentionally set the stage for policies that continue the inhumane treatment of people with mental illnesses in prisons, hospitals, and workplaces.
Franz added “eliminating stigma, in my perspective, will require multi-disciplinary grassroots community organizing efforts across the working class to improve living conditions universally. We cannot be mentally well until we feel safety and security in our needs being met.
“These needs are not being met under the current systems, but it doesn’t have to be like this. All work that centers curiosity, care, intentionality, or dare I say, love, helps build the communities needed to address stigma, but stigma work alone is not enough to eliminate it without the rest,” Franz said.
