By Jennifer Hicks

After 34 years living in my body, I became an expert. That is, an expert in myself. And I discovered, after all that time, that I am not ordinary.

I have Bipolar Disorder. But that’s not what makes me different. I am unique because of how I have learned to manage my Bipolar Disorder. Yes, I need medication and psychotherapy, but there’s more to my wellness plan. I use Nia – a fitness practice which not only offers me physical fitness, but also a lifestyle, and now a profession.

Looking at me, you’d never know I have a mental health issue. Spend a little bit of time with me and you still likely wouldn’t guess. Ask my family or friends about its impact on my life, and they probably wouldn’t be able to pinpoint anything “abnormal”. In fact, people would actually describe me as engaged, ambitious and driven. Looking at me from the outside, this mental illness thing appears to be rather invisible in my life.

Still, appearances, as they say, are deceiving. I do swing between abnormally elevated and depressed moods.

It’s difficult for folks to appreciate the considerable amount of energy I use every single day to level out my moods. [...] continue the story

Saraƒin is a Toronto area cartoonist, writer, illustrator, and activist. www.asylumsquad.com began as a self-appointed therapy during a year long psychiatric incarceration. Her first novel, Asylum Squad Side Story: The Psychosis Diaries collects the earlier strips, which were first uploaded to an online blog during Saraƒin’s hospital passes.

Saraƒin lives with the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, which was brought on by chronic marijuana and automatism usage. She has been mentioned in the Globe and Mail, the Torontoist, has been published in the U of T’s Ars Medica, Bitch magazine online, and has spoken at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine during the 2012 Comics and Medicine conference. Her dream is to make a living doing art alone.

Glenn Close, the founder of http://BringChange2Mind.org, tells the very personal story of how mental illness affected her family. Visit http://BringChange2Mind.org for more information on how you can help combat the stigma around mental health.

October 21, 2009

Director Ron Howard lent his vision to this PSA, made possible by over 100 volunteers coming together with one simple goal, to change minds about mental illness.

October 21, 2009

She was standing in the middle of Dixie’s living room when Molly and I walked in. She was holding a bottle of wine and made busy to get us some. “No, thank you,” I told her. She pushed. “No, thank you,” I told her again. She didn’t give up. Usually, just saying ‘no thank you’ gets the point across. But not this time. She tried to hand me a wine glass.

This was book club night, an evening with friends that, because I live quite a solitary life, I look forward to all month. I read the book for this month over a year ago and was sure I’d remember everything about it once the discussion began; I couldn’t have been more wrong. I couldn’t remember anything.

However, it isn’t the group I want to focus on, it isn’t the book or the eating or the yakking. It was this one woman, this pushy-with-alcohol woman, and myself. She is a summer person and neighbor of Dixie’s who threw the festivities this time and is someone none of us knew. In short, she isn’t from around here. She used the dreaded ‘C’ word to explain where she was from: California. Her nails were [...] continue the story