Local Author Opens Up About Bipolar Disorder

I wanted to share a story I wrote about a local author who published a memoir on her struggles with bipolar disorder. I interviewed her about her book, "Bipolar Girl: My Psychotic Self," which is a frank and detailed account of what it was like growing up in a traditional Mexican-American family that did not possess a "manual" for how to handle her illness, and her own struggle to accept her illness. The book also goes into how she got involved with a "warm" non-crisis line for mental illness sufferers and her efforts to create an online network bipolar sufferers through platforms like MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. One of the major obstacles for mental illness sufferers is actually the stigma surrounding the topic, which causes many to avoid medication (because they are in denial and do not like the side effects) or to avoid getting diagnosed. She held a reading and signing event at a local library, which was attended by many people whose family members suffer from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression and many talked about how they wished mental illness sufferers are not written off as just "crazy."