When Bipolar Disorder Takes Another Life, The Stigma Should Be What Dies Next

 

Image courtesy Unsplash.Com - work of Paolo Nicolello

Robert Carradine died by suicide today after a long fight with bipolar disorder. The news hit me harder than I expected. Not because I knew him personally, but because I know the illness that took him. I know what it feels like when your own brain turns into a battlefield. I know what it feels like to lose the fight for a moment and still be here to talk about it. I have been there. I have survived it. And I am tired of pretending that bipolar disorder is anything other than a medical condition that deserves compassion and treatment.

Every time someone with bipolar disorder or another mental illness dies, the world reacts with shock. People ask how it could happen. People whisper. People speculate. But very few people talk about the truth. Bipolar disorder is not a character flaw. It is not a weakness. It is not a failure of willpower. It is a brain chemistry disorder that can be brutal, unpredictable, and exhausting. It deserves the same seriousness and empathy we give to heart disease or cancer or any other life threatening condition.

But that is not how society treats it.

Instead, people with bipolar disorder get labeled as unstable or dramatic or dangerous. We get jokes made at our expense. We get told to calm down or get over it. We get treated like our illness is a personality problem instead of a medical one. And when someone dies, the stigma gets louder instead of quieter.

The truth is simple. People do not die from bipolar disorder because they are weak. They die because the illness is strong. They die because the stigma keeps people silent. They die because too many people are afraid to ask for help or afraid they will be judged if they do. They die because society still treats mental illness like a moral issue instead of a medical one.

I am bipolar. I have attempted suicide in the past. I am not ashamed of that. I am not hiding it. I am not pretending it did not happen. I survived because I got support, treatment, and time. I survived because people showed me empathy instead of fear. I survived because I was lucky. Not everyone gets that chance.

If we want fewer deaths, the stigma has to go. The shame has to go. The silence has to go. We need to talk about bipolar disorder the same way we talk about any other chronic illness. We need to stop treating people like they are broken or dangerous. We need to stop acting like mental illness is a moral failing.

Robert Carradine deserved better. Everyone fighting this illness deserves better. And the only way we get there is by telling the truth. Bipolar disorder is real. It is medical. It is treatable. And the people who live with it deserve compassion, not judgment.

The stigma should be what dies next.

Reblogging an update from my Ukrainian friend

 Hello.

Thank you very much for not forgetting about me.

Everything is fine with me. But now is a very difficult period. Russian imperial fascists are shelling Ukraine's energy infrastructure every day. We are having major problems with electricity, heating, water, and mobile communications. All this is complicated by the fact that we are having an abnormally cold winter. The temperature is 20 degrees below zero and lower. It is very cold and there is a lot of snow.

But we are holding on and will continue to hold on.

Due to the lack of electricity, my internet is not working properly. And the mobile internet is very weak. Sometimes it takes hours to load a single web page. That's why I can't go online very often right now. I have internet, but it's impossible to use because of the very slow speed.

Boy am I triggered

So the death of Dilbert creator and infamous racist pig, Scott Adams, from prostate cancer this week has poked some of my buttons.

My Dad was a good man, but he was a little too damn much of a hippie. When he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, his urologist told him that removal of his bladder would get it all, and he would live a long life. Then the urologist explained that the prostate goes out with the bladder, and that's the end of the sex life.

My father was 38 when he was diagnosed. He had an active social and dating and sex life. Losing the ability to have intercourse would have really been devastating to him. So he told the doctor, let's do mild chemo, and I'm gonna do laetrile and the nothing but wheat grass juice diet, and visualizing the cancer going away and all will be well.

But all was not well. After a couple of years, his cancer was down to a small spot of atypia, due, no doubt, to the mild chemotherapy. So very "intelligently" he stopped the chemo and continued with the quackery.

Seven months later, the cancer had run wild in his body. All of his organs, and his bones.

Scott Adams was told he had early state prostate cancer. He opted for, of all fucking things, ivermectin. He gambled and lost, just like my dad.

And I am reminded once again of how dangerous "alternative/holistic medicine" is.

Folks, laetrile is poison and does nothing. The baked potato diet will bore you to tears. The wheat grass juice only diet will turn you into a skeleton and weaken you so you die faster. Vizualization is soothing and helps the psyche, but it does not cure cancer. And if ANYBODY suggests bloodroot to you, kick them out of the house with prejudice.

And horse wormer will not cure cancer, either.

Got cancer? Go to a DOCTOR!

Andrea Yates

I recently read a book by Suzy Spencer, "Breaking Point" about the lead up to, the event of, and the aftermath of Andrea Yates drowning her five children. The book takes you through the years before the event and the Yates family's living situation and family dynamic, the murders, and the trial. It was a really gripping read, and had me in tears at times. If you have Kindle Unlimited, the book is free to read. Otherwise, Kindle is $2, and new copies start at $14 plus shipping, and go up from there...

For Renee

 
Her name was

Renee Nicole Macklin Good

Scream it loudly

FUCK ICE
FUCK MAGA
FUCK TRUMP MOST OF ALL

Not a thankful day for First Nations peoples

I am observing a day of remembrance and mourning for our land's Native Americans. Her first stewards, who loved her, and the cultures we destroyed and women and children and innocents we slaughtered so we could steal their homes and colonize, pollute, and desecrate.

Never forget. It was theirs and we stole it. It belonged to the Choctaw and the Blackfoot and the Nez Perce and the Apache and the Mohican and the Aztec and Inca and Maya and the Inuit and the Miq Maq and so many beautiful civilized nations.

We should really clean it the fuck up and give it back.

"The time has come

To say fair's fair

To pay the rent

To pay our share

The time has come

A fact's a fact

It belongs to them

Let's give it back.."

-Midnight Oil, Beds Are Burning, about the destruction of Australian aboriginal cultures, but it suits our US and south and north of the the border massacres as well.