Mental illness: don’t emphasize it, but don’t ignore it either

Since developing bipolar disorder in medical school, one of the biggest challenges associated with the diagnosis is whether and when I should disclose it and who I should disclose it to? What’s the strategy? There’s still so much stigma associated with mental illness in this world, and I’ve always wondered if people will judge me for it or if I will get passed over for opportunities if I bring it up. Luckily, I don’t think that’s been a major issue for me thus far. My personal philosophy on mental illness disclosure after almost a decade living with bipolar is: don’t emphasize it, but bring it up when it’s relevant. In other words, don’t make it the primary focus of, say, your personal statement but, rather, a secondary or tertiary topic if you think it’s relevant to the story. Disclosing to someone whether you have a mental illness truly is an art, and I’ve noticed it does take a bit of practice and experience to master it.

Mental illness is very much a disease like cancer, but, unlike cancer, we have very little information and understanding of what causes it, its mechanisms, treatment efficacy, diagnosis, etc, etc. All of that is still very controversial, with a lot of smart people discussing and working on it. I’m not a mental health expert, but I’ve been in the neuroscience field long enough to form opinions about it. I think because we understand so little about mental illness and it’s commonly portrayed in the news as being associated with criminality, most people in the population have this negative and mysterious perception of it: they try to avoid it when they can.

Yet, there’s this other portrayal of mental illness that is perhaps just as toxic, which is the glorification of it: the sort of mad genius stereotype. At the end of the day, there may be some truth to that statement, but I think that sort of mentality could be damaging to individuals with mental illness who do not possess the intellectual prowess or opportunities to achieve greatness. Mental illness, at the end of the day, is just an illness to be remedied with medication and professional care like any other. It’s not a superpower.