Can You Make my Heart Sing? The psych units at the local hospital had become my second home. I‘ve been admitted so many times, I don’t remember just how many to give an accurate tally. If I had to guess I’d say a few less than 20. I knew I had a hard time coping [...]
No one is too far away to be cared for, or to care. by Marty Baker "I never know how Fran is doing, not really. She can seem so fragile, so close to the edge, so hurt and hurting ... and then the next moment we are laughing, or mad at each other. I’m learning [...]
The stigma that comes from having a mental illness, especially paranoid schizophrenia, is so intertwined in my life that it is hard to untangle my fears and my hurt from what society, and the people around me, are actually saying and doing. Please don’t get me wrong, although my fear and hurt have darkened my [...]
I was brought to Stigma Fighters by a friend that had written for the site, and I returned again and again reading many stories that resonated. But I asked myself, what stigma am I fighting and what have I fought? And I come up with ‘labels’. I’m that person who came from a ‘broken home’. [...]
Hello Stigma Fighters! TEEN LINE is a Los Angeles, California based teen-to-teen helpline affiliated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Our trained teens answer calls, texts (US only), and emails from around the world 6p.m.-10p.m. Pacific Time. Adult volunteers from Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services answer the helpline number all other hours, providing suicide prevention support. Our [...]
On and off since the age of 10, I've been somewhere in the mental healthcare system. That's almost 18 years of treatment (mostly medication) and a whole host of diagnoses: major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and PTSD. Sometimes, it feels as though my life is made up of a series of waves [...]
THE POST I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE There's a subject that's been mulling around in my head for some time now. It's not an easy one to write about by any means. It's a touchy subject, a private subject, and it's important. My marriage. I haven't written it because I never know how to [...]
Growing up in a small town that sits in a small county (7000 souls total…or I assume souls-some of the people are iffy) I kept quiet for a long time about my struggle with depression. I didn’t want to be judged or stigmatized because I have something no one can see. Now, at 37, I [...]
Living with Mental Illness is like Playing Tennis with a Flat Ball By: Theresa Larsen, author of “Cutting the Soul” Imagine going onto a tennis court on a sunny day to play a game of tennis. You grab your racquet, stretch your arms, and pick up a ball. As you throw the ball in the [...]
I developed harming obsessions when I was 10 years old. The year was 1984 and virtually nothing was publicly known or discussed about the phenomena that today we know to be obsessive compulsive disorder. I was a grubby farm kid walking barefoot through pastures dotted with piles of cow manure and playing with the new batches [...]
