Dump the Stigma
and Focus on Recovery
by Andy "Electroboy" Behrman
(2002) -- For years I suffered with a mental
disability. I still do - no one has found a cure for manic depression
(bipolar disorder) yet. During those crisis years, though, nobody knew
anything was really wrong with me. I was experiencing a wild roller coaster
ride of frightening highs and lows that put my life in jeopardy, but my
disability was completely invisible.
Granted, I was behaving rather erratically, flying from New York to Tokyo
to Paris on business three or even four times a month, counterfeiting art
and smuggling tens of thousands of dollars back into the United States. At
the same time, I was drinking heavily and indulging in drugs
(self-medicating my mental illness), engaging in sex with complete strangers
that I would meet in bars and clubs, staying up for days on end, and in
general living on the edge ...
but my disability was an invisible one.
Friends and family were convinced I was functioning just fine because I
was efficient, productive and successful - who wouldn't be, working
twenty-hour days? I had everybody fooled with my illness. While my manic
depression remained undiagnosed, I secretly wished that my disability was a
physical one - one that others would notice. Maybe people would be
supportive and help me if I had diabetes or, God forbid, cancer. Maybe I
needed to show up to the next family function in a wheelchair to get
somebody's attention. I was helpless living with this invisible illness.
Once I was diagnosed, though, and given what I refer to as my "death
sentence," things changed quickly. And no, my family and friends did not
come rushing to my side to support me in battling against my illness -
somehow I fantasized that this was going to happen.
All of a sudden I realized the stigma of having a mental illness - it hit
me smack between the eyes. And the stigma was almost as bad as having to
come to terms with the fact that I was mentally ill and needed treatment.
The stigma, I realize now, "started" with me. I initiated it. It was my
own fault and a result of my own naiveté at age 28.
When the doctor diagnosed me and used the words "manic depression" and
"bipolar," I had no idea what he was talking about. "Manic" sounded like
"maniac" and "bipolar" sounded like "polar bear," so I was completely
confused (in retrospect I should have aligned myself with the term "bipolar"
then because of the "polar bear" association, but I didn't).
I was under the impression that the illness was degenerative and that I
probably wouldn't live to see my next birthday. I asked the doctor how many
other people there were like me - 2.5 million people in America alone.
He tried to calm me down and talk me through the diagnosis, but I was
self-stigmatized by my new label. And then, of course, he had to remind me
that I was now part of a category of people called "mentally ill." Oh, God.
I was a lunatic, a freak, a psycho, a crack-up and a mental case.
When I left his office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and walked
home across Central Park that snowy morning, I imagined being forced to have
electroshock therapy like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
I persuaded myself that I was overreacting, taking this too far. That could
never happen to me. But actually, I wasn't taking it too far. Less than
three years later I found myself in the operating room of a psychiatric
hospital in Manhattan, lying on a gurney with electrodes attached to my head
and receiving electroshock treatments - 200 volts of electricity through my
brain.
The stigma first hit me from the "outside world" with a little help from
the written prescription my doctor gave me. It was filled out for
medications thought to control my manic depression. The prejudice began
then.
On seeing it, my own neighborhood pharmacist remarked, "Your doctor's
putting you on all of this medication? - are you okay?" I didn't respond. I
paid for my four prescription drugs and left the pharmacy wondering exactly
what he meant by "all of this."
Was I some sort of "mental case" because I was now taking four different
medications? Did the pharmacist know something about my condition that I
didn't know? And did he have to say it in such a loud voice, just hours
after my diagnosis? No, he didn't, that was unkind. It seemed that even the
pharmacist had an issue with mentally ill patients, and trust me, mentally
ill patients in Manhattan were the "bread and butter" of his business.
Next I had to tell people about the diagnosis. Scared to death, I waited
a week until I got up the nerve to ask my parents to dinner.
I took them for a meal at one of their favorite restaurants. They seemed
suspicious. Did I have something to tell them? They automatically assumed I
was in some sort of trouble. It was written over both of their faces.
Assuring them that I wasn't, but had some news that might surprise them, I
just spilled the beans.
cont.
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