61. The agony of undiagnosed mental illness
All The Wiser
Kimi Culp
4.8 • 652 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2022
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheila Hamilton was married to David, the kind of man she always wanted to have kids with, brilliant and funny with a zest for life. And then one day she saw something in him that she hadn’t seen before - a darkness that suggested a deep internal struggle, which later progressed to extreme behavior change. It was confusing. Was this still the man she married? What she didn’t know was that David was suffering from undiagnosed bipolar disorder. What should we do when we suspect the one we love is suffering from mental illness?
Warning: this episode discusses suicide
In this episode, we talk about:
- Sign posts as David descended into mental illness.
- What it means to be a caretaker and love someone who is mentally ill.
- The struggle to separate the person from the illness.
- The power and importance of hope to carry someone who is a place of suffering and darkness.
- How common these conditions are.
- How better off we would be as a society if we could talk about them.
Stay connected to Sheila:
Website: www.sheilahamilton.com
Book: All The Things We Never Knew
Podcast: Beyond Well Media
Facebook: Sheila Hamilton Portland
Instagram: @sheilahamilton
Twitter: @SheilaHamilton
Charity Donation: Lines For Life
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| 0:54.4 | everything secure. I also had the experience that I couldn't separate when he was just being |
| 1:01.3 | an asshole with what was happening with his brain. Because he had never said to me, I feel like |
| 1:08.7 | my brain isn't functioning. He had never said, I fear I have a mental |
| 1:12.5 | illness. Sheila Hamilton was working as a reporter in Portland, Oregon when she met her charismatic, |
| 1:19.9 | energetic, and brilliant future husband, David, at a coffee shop. But what Sheila didn't know was |
| 1:26.3 | that there was another side of David that was battling |
| 1:29.2 | a deep internal struggle with untreated bipolar disorder. And after many years, as his illness progressed, |
| 1:37.4 | David's psychological pain worsened and became unbearable for him. |
| 1:42.3 | I keep thinking, like, what if I had just caught him earlier by saying no? |
| 1:48.2 | If you don't get help, if you don't actually do something to really address the issues that |
| 1:53.8 | you're having, I need to leave this marriage. |
| 1:56.6 | We might have caught him. |
| 1:58.1 | And I get really emotional thinking about that because once again, |
| 2:02.0 | it's like the amount of responsibility that we can carry for another person's mental illness |
... |
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