I got diagnosed with bipolar mood disorder when I was 16, and since then, I have lost count on the many times I have been referred to as ‘crazy’. There were so many times I would refrain from telling anybody that I am bipolar and would rather say I am stressed because that would make much more sense to them. This showed me how South Africa still has a long way to go in raising awareness on mental health and try to reduce the stigma and discrimination people with mental issues experience.

I have been living a normal life with bipolar disorder for 5 years now and it has been 7 years since I have been diagnosed. The first 2 years had my life on a stand still. I remember not being able to attend school and when my teachers were informed, that was the first they heard of such a disorder. A lot of fabricated stories were made up due to the lack of knowledge they had, but understanding that people cannot be compassionate to what they do not know – I made peace with it while trying to deal with what I thought of as a demon. Growing up in a religious family, a demon attack was more sensible than episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.

One of the many symptoms of bipolar mood disorder is losing touch with reality and that was my biggest pitfall because that only confused people so much more. I come from a rural area but I was fortunate enough to have family that understood the mental illness for what it is and I spent the 2 years in and out of psychiatric institutions, being offered the best treatment until I was stable enough to live a normal life, not as a ‘crazy’ person but as a teenager living with a mental illness.

Not everyone gets to be this fortunate, especially not in rural areas. There are so many mental cases where people get sent to traditional healers only to worsen the situation or rather get labelled as the community’s ‘mad’ person.

So many people live with undiagnosed mood, anxiety, personality, psychotic, eating disorders because of the lack of awareness especially in disadvantaged areas. This also impacts the school system immensely. Mental health should be a focused subject in South African schools as this would better the knowledge and therefore make it easier for people to freely talk about it and create a norm so no one living with the illness can be shamed.