Life Unlimited

“I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live in pain,” my internal thoughts said to me during my suicide attempt at the age of fourteen. I didn’t realize until after trying to kill myself that I wanted to be alive.

I could not have pictured my life turning out like this before, but now I like how my fellow DBSA Peer Support Specialists apprentices and I are not letting our mental health issues control us!

After becoming open about my struggles with suicidality and bipolar disorder, the world became a brighter place, and I created genuine relationships with people, almost for the first time.

As a person living with mental health conditions, participating in the groups gives me a sense of community and something to look forward to. When I’m having a bad day, I know someone will be there to listen.

I deal with depression every single day. I question why I was put here on this earth. I say to myself: you were put here on this earth to make a difference in other people's lives. I do that when someone comes to DBSA.

I felt like no one could understand what I was going through. DBSA support groups taught me I was wrong.

For me, the support groups are a place where we can let our hair down. We can talk about the things people say to us that make us feel bad. A lot of us have experienced the same types of discrimination and can say “Yeah, I’ve heard that too. I understand.”

Summer of 2021 will mark 20 years of my living with Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety and Panic Disorder. I was diagnosed at 19 years old, right before starting my second year of college.

I have a strong history of trauma that started at age 9 and continued until I was 19. I knew I was different from an early age. At 19, I had people in my life who helped me seek therapy.

I was an overachiever in high school, so I always thought that college would be the place where I would flourish and realize my true potential. Instead, I didn't even recognize myself in the mirror anymore by the time I reached my senior year.

My experience with depression has taught me that I can reach out for help when I need it and to surround myself with supportive people.

At 20 years old, I was hospitalized for one month and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

I was very depressed during my junior year in high school but chalked it up to moving to a new house away from my friends.

Around age 9, I noticed that I didn’t process thoughts and ideas the same way that my peers did.

It is important to share our positive and negative experiences with the world.

I’ve had many years dealing with depression and mania. My symptoms started in my late teens.

I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 24 years old.

I wasn’t diagnosed with bipolar disorder until my first depressive episode, which was triggered by my dad’s suicide.

Last April, I found myself in the office of a new therapist for the third time due to a homophobic comment made by my previous therapist.

Despite my childhood years where I was diagnosed with ADHD, my struggle with mental illness began many years ago in high school during my sophomore year.

Born into a dysfunctional family as the youngest of four girls, I experienced a childhood that shaped my future.

I am a psychiatrist with a practice in New York City and I have bipolar disorder. My story is about the voices in my head.

Since I was 5 years old, my life has felt like a constant roller coaster of chaos, although at an early age I gained some coping skills...

The best way I can describe my experience with bipolar is that it is like the movie A Beautiful Mind—minus the paranoid schizophrenia. 

I had a great childhood, playing sports and spending time with family. We lived near the beach in the South Coast of Massachusetts and I had access to all ocean activities growing up.

I was diagnosed with bipolar in 2006 after three years of psychotic behavior and multiple hospitalizations.

Even as a young child, I lacked impulse control and fear of consequences. If I wasn’t engaged and feeling like I was learning something new, I’d get bored very easily...

I was very blessed growing up: my parents were happily married, I was never abused, and I never had to worry about where my next meal would come from...

I believe I was born with a predisposition for mental health conditions and that substance use disorder triggered its onset.

My mother, widowed at an early age, was a teacher and I was her youngest daughter. She had to face life with three children in an underdeveloped country.

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome....  This saying was powerful while I was serving in the United States Army, and it still is.

Is there a tipping point in a person’s life where the drive to be better, to never quit, and to throw off doubt...

Bipolar disorder did not become a part of my life until I was 34. While I had experienced several bouts of depression earlier in my life...

At an early age, I started to feel like I was much different than people around me. I’ve always felt that I have never truly fit in with the crowd.

Let the journey begin. I relied on two diaries from ages 10-20 to help recall details. Partying with friends to help slow my racing mind...

I’m 61. And, I have really only discovered in the past nine years what it means to live Life Unlimited by mental pain.

Mental health challenges are no joke. They suck. Suffering with anxiety, severe depression, and ADHD has made "adult life" challenging.

Ever since I was a child, I felt different, too emotional for my own good. When I was fourteen, the feelings became too much, and my doctor prescribed an antidepressant.

After living with bipolar disorder for ten years, I can see that God uses the struggles of a few to save the lives of many.

Having bipolar disorder has not made for an easy life. But within my pain and struggles there have been transformative gifts...

At 19, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. From that point, life was a struggle. My moods were all over the place.

Over the years, medications changed, counselors changed, locations changed, but the condition was always there—relentless.

One of the most emotional moments of my life was when I decided I was staying—when I took suicide off the table.

I’ve always excelled in everything I’ve tried. In grade school, I swam on the YMCA swim team.

To put it mildly, my upbringing was pretty tempestuous. As a result, I developed woefully low self-esteem—I was inherently not good enough, no matter the situation...

One day, a little more than three years ago, I was lying in my mother's bed curled up in the fetal position.

I define my life by one never-ending belief: I believe in me. That belief has guided me from hell into a fulfilling life...

I have always loved technology. I even go as far as saying, “My mind (aka my CPU) is my favorite and most powerful muscle.”

It happened very quickly. I had just finished my sophomore year at college and was working at a summer camp.

“You’re not good enough!” “Things will never get better!” “It’s hopeless!” These are just a few of the voices of bipolar disorder that have been living in my head since I was a teenager.

I developed major depressive disorder when I was eighteen, caused by severe social anxiety. Treatments failed, perhaps not unexpectedly...

As with many of us I knew from an early age I was different from the children and adults that were in my life.

I had a happy childhood, so the first time I felt depressed, it came as quite a shock. I was 18 years old and away at college during my second semester.

It never crossed my mind that I might be suffering from a mental illness, despite staying awake for days at a time...

I’m a 47 year old single mother that used to maintain a wonderful career in the healthcare industry and had a very productive life until the end of 2008.

On a fragrant, spring evening in 2006, my mood and behavior were marred by somber darkness and crippling psychosis. It was my first break in several years.

In the dark year of 1999, I was challenged with a dilemma that I thought could not be solved. But luckily, with treatment and time, I recovered gracefully.

When I was eight years old I announced that when I grew up I was going to be a famous artist and live in Paris.

Some of my earliest memories go back to when I was in kindergarten. These are not happy memories of friends, coloring, chocolate milk, and cookies.

My journey with bipolar certainly has framed my adult life, but it hasn’t defined it. Just getting a correct diagnosis was certainly half the battle...

As a college freshman, I fell into a suicidal depression, believing that my family and the world would be better off without me.

I was raised in Los Angeles, the daughter of a world-class violinist who played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

My mental illness emerged at the very end of 2005 in December—two years into my marriage, but before kids came along.

I was born to a substance-addicted mother in a rough section of North Philadelphia, and was raised by my grandmother and step-grandfather.

When I found out I had been named the recipient of DBSA’s 2014 Life Unlimited Award, I was stunned.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly before my 30th birthday.

Beginning in 2000, I lived with a 5 year episode of depression which my psychiatrist described as the worst he had ever treated.

If you walk about half a block down my street, you’ll see it—the locked treatment center for kids where I lived in the late 1980s.

I always knew something wasn’t right. Throughout childhood, I swung back and forth between states of high energy and low self esteem.

If I had to pinpoint a time when I first felt the symptoms of depression—the feelings of sadness, aloneness, and worthlessness...

“I wish my son had cancer instead of depression” the mother of an Indian teenager I recently met said to me.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” Pr. 13:12. This scripture beautifully describes the journey I have traveled...

After a distinguished career in the Navy, I was proud to join the public sector utilizing the immeasurable discipline and knowledge...

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder during my sophomore year of college. I distinctly remember how alone and scared I felt...

If you met me five years ago, it may well have been on a locked psychiatric ward. I may have told you I was a prophet...

I was born in the middle of the great depression in 1933.  Hoover was president and my family was trying to make ends meet.

What I have learned about living with and overcoming bipolar disorder can be summed up in three words: faith, hope, and knowledge.

A diagnosis of bipolar disorder can change your life in an instant. Learning to not be defined by that diagnosis takes faith, support, and sheer will.

“Never Give Up.” Three bold words written across my favorite SGI International t-shirt. The simple phrase resonates with a lesson that I learned...

My first depression hit when I was 16. After an increasing downward spiral of drinking and abusing prescription drugs, I attempted suicide...

In 2002, I was on the way to marriage with the love of my life. I was a workaholic technologist with a comfortable income.

I was twenty when I found myself in a mental institution being handed a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

I walk into class, my shield a thick blue binder filled with my countless ideas and thoughts—my nature in disorganized paper form.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2003 at the age 29 after friends and coworkers intervened, confronted my mood instability...

I was first officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of nineteen after falling into a suicidal depression.

The elite United States Army Airborne Rangers' motto "Rangers Lead The Way!" originated when the US Army Rangers were tasked...

Acceptance. The acceptance of having the bipolar disorder was not something I knew very well.

My name is Chris Jasikoff and I am being treated for major depression and social anxiety. My story begins way back in my childhood...

For over twenty years, I have struggled with symptoms of mental illness. When I was only twelve, my father passed away...