This is a check in for all you dopers coping with a mental illness. For the broadest possible range, I’ll allow those with addictions to check in too. Enough with the namby pamby leftys, and whose gay. this is for you who want to share something really personal
First off. Oldscratch. Hi I’m bipolar
Hi oldscratch! Thought I’d drop in even though I don’t think I have an illness (unless laziness counts.)
I just wanted to point out that mental illness is still one of the “taboos” in our society (or at least, so it seems to me.) I remember recently discussing with some friends the case of a person who had breast cancer, and when we switched topics to yet another person and I suggested that the person of whom we were now speaking was mentally ill, everyone else was horrified. Why would a mental illness be worse than breast cancer?
A friend of mine (an MD) who had a brother with schizophrenia (he recently died) is active with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. She seems to think that they are a worthwhile organization. I haven’t read much of their literature so I haven’t formed an opinion on them personally, but I trust my friend’s recommendation.
Hey arnold. Thanks for checking in. Who knows, maybe you have an illness and don’t know it.
I will agree with the taboo part. Not to make light of anything, but in SF it’s more acceptable to tell someone you have AIDS than you have a mental illness. For most people the hardest part of having a problem is the lack of understanding other people give them. I’ve been in a hospital before. I’ve been very lucky that most of my friends and relatives are supportive. But, some people just get abandoned.
I guess it cause it’s very hard to understand. It’s easy to understand what a phsyical illness can do to people, to see it’s effects.
For a lot of people, they just don’t understand how someone can not be right in the head. They tend to blame the person. I wish it was that easy. I wish it was just a failing of mine, and that if I were a better person or a stronger person I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Ah well. Right now the best I can hope for in my life is that it doesn’t get worse.
Um, Hello everybody. My name is Dragonlady and I’m a clinical depressive. Been in and out of treatment for 10 years. Currently off meds for the last two years.
I’ve been diagnosed as paranoid and depressed, but I’ve been depressed longer than I’ve been paranoid.
Congratulations, dragonlady, on being med free for so long. I only wish I could say the same. Although I can say that I haven’t seen a therapist in over 2 years but that’s AMA.
Another bipolar here - except I’ve been on the low end of the scale for quite a while now.
I guess this hasn’t come up for a while, but there are/were quite a few of us here. I know some have left.
Threads about this are about as cyclic as most bipolar folks are.
Well, let’s just say that I’m about three feathers short of a full canary.
Does ADD count? Of course if you look all over the board you can tell that I am somewhat hyperactive.
Depression. Glad it’s not clinical . … yet. But I do have dysthemia, a milder form.
Varying stages of MPD. Varying depending on the situation. Mostly I can control it. Sometimes I can’t. Not fun stuff when that happens.
Some fucked-up thing in my brain that doesn’t allow me to write legibly unless I go MAD slow.
Anyone who’s got a problem with this . . . you can either sit down and abandon the thought that it’s because I think I have it that I’m affected by it, or you can keep being ignorant 
I’m a Prozac King. Depressive, a bit obsessive, but in engineering where that’s an advantage.
Been accused of paranoia by people here & IRL, but no diagnosis.
Sue here. Dysthymia (kind of like a chronic, low-level depression), treated with Paxil.
Checking in again. I’m a rapid cycler. So I can go from a to b in a period of an hour. Not fun at all. I don’t know which I would rather have, long cycles or these damn rapid ones. Being in a cycle for years at a time seems unbearable. But, so does being happy one moment and unable to do shit the next. Mine have been really bad recently. I’ve been on Olanzapine and it’s been helping
Self-diagnosed dysthemic here. I’m the mental health equivalent of a Weeble: I wobble, but I don’t fall down. 'bout as stable too.
Med free all my life (see the self-diagnosed part up there), but I think it’s about time to change that.
Hey, guys. Clinical depression here – diagnosed six years ago at the tender age of 13, but obviously present from early childhood… I took a medical leave of absense from school last semester (second semester of my freshman year, that is), but I’m hanging in there right now… I just want to tell you all how brave I think you are for sharing your illness here. I know it can be rough. 
With hugs and kisses,
Jessica
Recovered alcoholic (sober 10 years) depressive here.
Falcon here. Severly depressed, treated with Paxil.
Hey ho,
I’m a newbie, but thought I’d check in all the same.
Diagnosed with Major depression 3 yrs ago, experienced mild manic swings (apparently), up and down over last two years, mailny down.
Currently med free- for 6 months, and still holding onto the belief that you can feel up, your can feel down, but labels are for jars of fruit, and I don’t eat the same k8ind of fruit all the time.
Basically, I believe we can all control our mental states conciously, if we maintain good health, and know the right techniques. Dam I had better be right!
Benno
I hear voices. Or at least, I have. I went to a Psychiatrist about it, and completely stumped him and his co-worker.
It doesn’t happen that often, and usually isn’t much more than a temporary annoyance, but they wanted to put me on meds for the times that I can’t ignore the hallucination. That was until they came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a hallucination afterall, but that I really do hear it.
It used to freak me out a bit, but after my dad, in asking, pretty much told me exactly what it’s like, it doesn’t anymore. Cause as it turns out, he experienced something almost completely identical, at my age.
Besides this I think I have an anger management problem.
I don’t get mad often, but when I do, I get furious. I just want to throw and smash things. I’ll sometimes pick things up, and then put them down and take out the anger on myself by pulling my hair or scratching.
Then there’s the ‘touching thing’…
Oh, and the Psychs want me to track my ups and downs, cause they’re suspicious of depression.
But I find that ridiculous.
Hey Mega, I know some people like you (the voices thing). My mom experienced it in her 20’s , it went away after a while.
Sometimes I get what I call “interference”, it’s not halucinations per se. It’s much less than that, but it sounds very similar to what you have. A lot of bipolars I know experience it too.