Out of 29,188 nursing students nationwide, I ranked 3rd on the May 2014 NLE, graduated Cum Laude in college, Salutatorian in high school and consistently belonged in the top of my class ever since I set foot in a school. No this is not because I feel entitled to brag, but this is to serve as a preliminary warning if ever you are tempted serve me your prejudice. From here on, let it be known that I have Bipolar 1 disorder and I am not ashamed of it. No it doesn’t make me an imbecile or lesser of a person than you. In fact, I am a highly functional and intellectual individual who cared and will continue to care for my patients with compassion and empathy. No, bipolar doesn’t interfere with the way I deliver my service as a registered nurse or a future physician. I am fearlessly saying that despite having this disease,I have been able to thrive and achieve extraordinary things more than any normotypicals could possibly have done. If your perception of me as a person changed upon reading this, then you seriously need to re-evaluate yourself. You can judge me all you want if you are smarter than me or have been a topnotcher in a licensure exam, I acknowledge and respect your superiority above me and by all means, vest any kind of judgement. However, if you are not smarter, and you choose mockery or spread petty gossip about me from having a disorder that even I did not choose to have, then shame on you because you simply have no right to do that. RESPECT BEGETS RESPECT. If you judge me because of an uncontrollable imbalance in my neurotransmitters, then does that mean I can judge you for your mediocrity when you infact have a completely normal brain? Yes I suffer from severe extreme mood swings, but at least in the 23 years of my existence, my brain had never been sluggish to bring me any hint of worry on whether I would pass examinations nor did I have to crawl my way to a 75% mark just to pass the next level. Yes, I could not control my emotions when I am on an episode just the same way as you cannot control your brain to quickly understand and integrate concepts and be able to retrieve them when needed. But when I am myself, I genuinely mean every promise I make, I choose to see the good in everyone, and I give everything that I have without expecting something in return to the people I love;my family and friends. No this is not grandiose thinking brought about by mania, I am simply stating concrete facts which can be backed up by my medals and certificates. I do not mean to shame anyone for their intellectual abilities, but this is the only way that I can let you imagine how we as human beings simply could not control parts of our brain. The point I am trying to emphasize here is that, you also have no right to belittle me for struggling against a complex mental disorder whose pathophysiology up to now remains an enigma. Having a mental illness does not make us objects of ridicule or discrimination. Mental disorders are not limited to schizophrenia or images depicted by movies as violent crazy people locked up in asylums. In reality, a lot of us are seemingly normal persons who try our best everyday to be functional members of the society.
After my diagnosis, I was faced with this enigmatic question; If I truly believed that mental illness shouldn’t bear the associated stigma imposed by the society , then why do I feel ashamed to tell others what kind of medications I have to take or whether what kind of doctor I regularly go to for check ups. My interest to be in the psychiatric field started when I was a nursing freshman enrolled in one of our minor subjects:general psychology. Ever since then, I could not think of any other career to be involved in. Maybe a part of me have always felt different hence the eagerness to understand myself. The plan of being a psychiatric nurse practitioner turned to a goal of becoming a psychiatrist when I entered medschool. Possessing this passion for psychiatry, I thought that more than anyone else, I am free from any trace of judgement. I guess it’s a different experience when you’re at the receiving end of a mental illness. From being a nurse or an aspiring psychiatrist, my world turned upside down and I suddenly became the psychiatric patient who recognizes therapeutic communication techniques employed to me by my psychiatrist. Knowing that a genetically predisposed disorder is coursing in my blood, my ultimate dream of having a family and producing genius babies suddenly seemed too far away. Would I really want to pass this disease to my future sons or daughters? Would a man personally choose me or would his family ever approve with mixing their bloodline with a tinge of crazy? I am faced with a hard truth, I do not know who I am anymore. How frequent did the bipolar me took over? Were all my achievements, focus and unshakeable determination brought about by mania? Or were all the ruined relationships and special people who drifted from my life driven away by the dark depressive me?
As time went by, I was reminded by the fact that there is more to me than my illness. Yes, I have a dark side just like everyone else. Sharing my diagnosis online and to the whole world is a conscious choice I am making to raise awareness and fight stigma. I know that this can jeopardize some of my chances to be employed in the future or prevent the prospects of friendship and romantic involvement from happening and it scares the hell out of me. But being in the medical field, as a registered nurse and a future physician, now more than ever, I finally know that it is not a far possibility to impact a change on the deeply rooted stigma instilled in our Filipino culture. When we were growing up, adjectives like “sira ulo”, “baliw”, “wala sa pag iisip”, “toyo”, “saltik”, “ketek”, “may tililing” were used to negatively describe outcasts who were dangerous, uncontrollable, or even violent. Mental disorders are on a spectrum and is not limited to schizophrenia just like how you would not put cardiovascular or respiratory disorders under one stereotyped classification. I want to give you an insight that there are people like me who struggles to defy our disorder every single day. What if some of us were blessed with such intelligence and exquisite neural circuitry that even when we’re crippled in depression, still continue to function. The point is, God has given us different crosses to bear, each of us is facing our own battles and being kind to one another is not that hard and will make this world easier to live in. Having experience the depths of darkness I know I can turn this into something positive that gives me the edge to empathize with the mentally ill because I know how it feels like to be scared, misunderstood, and isolated. I know that it will be my lifelong mission to advocate and educate people on mental health. That although, disclosing my bipolar disorder to everyone can hurt my future deeply and indefinitely, every single judgement or rejection passed on to me will be worth it if this act meant instilling hope to a single soul or save even just one life from the claws of suicide. That hey, being mentally ill is something you should not be ashamed of or a life sentence that you have to go through alone. That maybe just maybe, we are not far from living in a perfect world where visiting a psychiatrist, buying anti-psychotics from a drug store, or having to admit that you are mentally ill will not make one shunned away by the society.
Epiphanies of a bipolar med student 