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Erratic,

I think you and I see things in different lights, but that's OK.

I don't know of any one person besides Oprah who can make such a huge difference in helping to erratiicate social stigmas about mental illness in general. I personally don't remember ever seeing any kind of hardship story on her show where she doesn't go to the good side of things (in telling people how they can get help and how others over came their illnesses).

Yeah, I think you have to tell the bad things about mental illness, so that other people can understand and maybe have some sympathy rather than being afraid of people with mental illness. AND to help erase all the horror story pictures society has engrained in their minds from decades of movies and t.v. shows where all mentally ill people are portrayed in the absolute worst charactor types - like being violent and put in straight jackets and padded rooms, while being injected with who knows what kind of drugs that put them into zombie like states.

A large percentage of people still think depression and other illnesses are personal character flaws that people can change about themselves if they really wanted to... rather the public needs to be educated so they can understand that it is physical nature of the disease that makes it no different than cancer or heart disease. That it's caused from faulty genes that produce chemical imbalances in the brain and that should be viewed with the same kind of sympathy as cancer or heart disease.

I think the best thing, and most important thing, we can do for ourselves and other people with mental illnesses is to try to change the stigmas associated with our disease.

Oprah's general outlook and goal is to help people --not hurt them.

And I totally agree that ECT should be used more and be made more easily accessible because everything I've learned about it is that the positive affects far outweight the slight risks (like temporary memory loss).

If I had a way to do it, I would have chosen ECT many, many months ago. If I had undergone ECT during or right after my first hospital stay, I truely believe that I would not have lost my job and so much more. People like me are suffering needlessly and we need to stand up for ourselves.

I don't know why they are chosing only to concentrate on personality disorders, but being a part of the media myself, I know that there is only so much time you have in an hour and you can only cram so much information into 60 minutes, minus commercials.

I also have to wonder if their reasoning might be that....since Schizophrenia and other personality disorders are feared and looked down on even more than bipolar disorder....then maybe they look at it like this, "If we can help bring down some of the stigmas about personality disorders...then stigmas about lesser degrees of mental illness will come down as well.

These are just my personal opinions. I guess we won't know until the show airs as to what their intentions are.


Thanks for posting in and expressing your side of things. I really appreciate it.

Hugs,
Jenna