My Experience With Mental Illness - 1735 Words

Growing up, I experienced a wide variety of mental illnesses within my family. In my younger years, I always wondered why my family had so many issues different from most families (or so I thought). As I have gotten older, had my own experiences, had friends with mental illnesses and learned more about the brain in my General Psychology class; it actually began to amaze me more people do not experience mental illness because of how complex the brain is. I attribute my curiosity in Psychology to my own experiences with mental illness and with the experience of my family members and friends. Initially, my mother told me about my great-grandmother (Alta). Alta experienced paranoid-schizophrenia and often struggled to take her medications.†¦show more content†¦Secondly, my father’s cousin Tim struggled with depression and eventually took a shotgun to his head in his parent’s basement after calling his loved ones to say â€Å"goodbye.† My father’s sister, Laura, battled anorexia-nervosa during high school and was eventually hospitalized. Lastly, three years ago on thanksgiving, my former soccer teammate and neighbor, Kelsey, overdosed on heroin in her basement. Later on it came out that she had experienced a personality disorder. To this day, I have no idea which personality disorder she had, but most rumors said it was multi-personality disorder. After Kelsey passed away, my interest in mental disorder and personality disorders grew. With that being said, I was thrilled to be assigned the reading of Kay Redfield Jamison’s experie nce with manic-depressive in her book An Unquiet Mind. Kay Redfield Jamison’s prologue opens with Jamison not wanting to hide her manic-depressive illness anymore and taking ownership in her experiences and making them a beautiful part of her life. I think this is courageous and hope that more and more people follow in her footsteps. I feel with more people talking about their mental illness, the stigma against them would have to deteriorate. After reading the prologue, she reorganizes and begins telling her story in chronological order. For example, she takes us through her childhood and what it was like living in military bases and having a pilot for a