Posted on March 4, 2016 in Bipolar Disorder Literature Movies Psycho-bunk Suicide
“Suicide attracts speculation and prurience like flies to rotting food.”
Posted on October 24, 2015 in Bipolar Disorder Hospitals and Prisons Vacation 2015
I wasn’t able to arrange any interviews. The doctors in the Senegalese mental hospitals were defensive, fearful that I would paint a bad picture of conditions, or busy. The assurances of the State Department staff who were helping me didn’t sooth this naive patriotism or persuade them to give me half an hour, but I learned a little. There’s no social security in Senegal, so the mentally ill either rely on the care of their family or begging. I didn’t see many people who struck me as being afflicted on the streets (unlike London and Paris), so I assumed that they had been assimilated into the crowd and received care of sorts from other dwellers of Dakar’s streets.
The luckier among the mentally ill receive support from their families who send them to mental institutions where they receive treatment in the form of psychotropics. These help as long as the money holds out — a familiar story to those of us who remember the dark days before Obamacare. I can’t tell you about the conditions in the hospitals; so, I don’t know if they followed the best standards of care or if they were dank prisons where patients were chained or locked into padded cells.
Mental illness is recognized even in the more remote and traditional areas, which refutes the myth that people in Africa regard people living with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as holy. Instead, they are ostracized and feared — as they have always been, even when they have found a niche as shamans.
Most of the mentally ill disappear into the mass of people walking the streets of this city. They are ignored and forgotten, their symptoms shrugged off which is not the reverence of the myth makers. There’s rumor of an American in one of the suburbs who is in episode; there is no retrieving him and taking him home, however, because he will not come into the embassy for evaluation.
If I stayed around, I might see more; time is running out, however.
Posted on October 23, 2015 in Bipolar Disorder Depression Encounters Mania Vacation 2015
I’ve been in three time zones this trip
Posted on October 1, 2015 in Agitation Bipolar Disorder Photography Vacation 2015
Why am I doing this? I don’t want to go mad.
Posted on August 3, 2015 in Bipolar Disorder Mixed States Suicide Video
My latest video in the series called My Life with Bipolar Disorder.
Posted on July 23, 2015 in Courage & Activism Depression Stigma Suicide Violence
Black lives with mental illness matter, too.
Posted on July 21, 2015 in Mania Stigma
I read because I want to understand this strange state of mind that seizes me at unlikely times.
Posted on July 19, 2015 in Bipolar Disorder Hope and Joy Psycho-bunk Stigma
Let us realize that for every poem, there are many long dark nights of the soul that the sufferer would prefer to be without.
Posted on June 30, 2015 in Depression Mania
The future remains an unprinted page whereupon there are no answers.
Posted on June 28, 2015 in Exuberance Mania Psychotropics Rage & Annoyance
You think you have The Beast sealed under a layer of concrete, but the covering proves to be no stronger than a sheet.