I had my 6 month check up with my psychiatrist today and we were speaking openly about suicide after admitting that I was having suicidal thoughts. We were also discussing the differences in being suicidal and having suicidal thoughts (that is a different post.) He said that 19% of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder take their own life and that equals like 1 in 5. Those odds are shocking for some reason. If you think about the big picture 2.3 million Americans are diagnosed with bipolar disorder. If I did my math right that equals out to 437,000 people. That means there are 437,000 people contemplating suicide most with no support from anyone.I am one of the biggest supporters for the AFSP but how do we fix this? What can we as the mental health community do to combat these odds? There are so many people who can’t afford medicine, therapy let alone see a psychiatrist to properly diagnose and help them. This is something we need to recognize and help each other. We aren’t going to receive any help from the government and there is so much of a stigma attached to us people refuse to publicly support it unless it is a celebrity who claimed to “recover” from it. We need to speak openly and honestly about our struggles. I think we can be the change if we become more comfortable being open and knowing even though they might not understand we can make them care. 1 person loss to suicide is 1 too many. Let’s start the conversation and help decrease these numbers.
Tag: Day 26
Grateful Day 26 & 27 old and new medicine
My medicine is self explanatory. It keeps getting updated though because of my sleep so as you notice the pills have changed and this is in a couple of months. I have an entire post dedicated to this coming soon. My new and old meds.