I’ve never been so depressed that suicide seemed like a real option. I’ve certainly thought about it, but a moment of logical thought can reveal the consequences, and perhaps that’s what kept me alive through 40 years or more of undiagnosed and untreated mental illness.
Now I don’t want to go all A Beautiful Mind and I can deal with this with the power of my intellect, because with mental illness it is the intellect that gets fucked up, but for me there have always been a couple of thoughts to counteract the fatal urge: It’s not just about me and I want to know what happens next.
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But now you’re dealing with? Because what you call “mental illness” sounds vague and I believe that there are mechanisms for different types of mental illness. Find these mechanisms should not be just an intellectual matter, but also a matter of proper therapy. Or not?
In Brazil we are under a catastrophic situation in relation to mental illness – we have 16 million people with mental deceases, which corresponds to almost ten percent of the population of the country (190 millions). In addition, about 600 new cases go untreated every day.
Claudio Edinger is a braziliam photographer who did pictures at one of the most horrible hospitals for mental illness in São Paulo. The pictures were shown at Lens, the photo blog of NYT. The images have a Goya´s density
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/showcase-33/
Well it was posted in the Bipolar Disorder category and tagged with “bipolar disorder”, so perhaps I’m dealing with that. And it was posted as a reflection on my thoughts of suicide in the past, before my diagnosis and treatment. Mental illness is a big issue in most countries, but right now I’m writing from the personal perspective of a “sufferer”, and I’m not really interested in the wider issues (but of course that might change).
Right! And I hope your new blog soon finds a circle of others writing and exchanging… Of course more especific targets will show up, lets say “bipolar & art”, “bipolar $ science”…
there are already the “top ten bipolar blogs”
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/09/12/top-ten-bipolar-blogs/
That list is from 2007. Besides, my blog’s not on it, so it can’t be right :) crazymer1.wordpress.com