Nobody ever talked about it . . . .

Until just recently most people would not talk about mental health, especially if someone in their family had problems. I am greatly saddened that mental health has not been seen as the real medical problem it is and that it has always been shoved into the closet and hidden away. Now that I am in my 70s and in retrospect in can see where mental illness was a problem in my own family, my mother's side as well as my fathers. My mothers side of my heritage has apparently always suffered from undiagnosed degrees of depression, running from the milder side to BiPolar Disorder. I grew up thinking they were all just normal and so was I (I thought), until my daughter was diagnosed as BiPolar at almost 40 years of age. Because no one ever talked about mental disease, I just thought she was another one of those sour pusses from my mother's side of the family. After her diagnosis, (which coincided with the oncoming of the internet), I began doing sporadic research about depression and bipolar disorder, especially. The more I read the more I realized that one entire half of my family was affected by it. My father's side had their fair share of "oddballs" too, they were a little "batty", but mostly harmless and just plain funny once you figured out what their problem was. But the depressive side has been really the worst of all worlds. I finally admitted that I was depressive when I was in my 60s and was put on anti depressants. The difference in my personality was absolutely amazing, and I began to like myself for the first time. I often tell people that if it wasn't for Prozac they would hate me.
I will delve more into my own dizzyingly out of control life in a later post, but meantime, let's all be more aware of mental health and talk about it openly so people who are mentally ill don't have to suffer for years before they are helped. Now that I am somewhat better, I realize how miserable life has been and how miserable I made others because of my mental illness