Welcome back to the peripheral. I had a lot of help getting this episode done, but I do want to give a

disclaimer that I had a bunch of audio problems and my voice doesn't sound the best, but my guest

sounds great. And that's all that really matters.

It's their story.

So today's episode, I speak with Chris, who talks about his journey with mental health,

how he became aware of his struggle, and then how he was able to get medicated and stabilized. I hope it inspires anyone out there that's

struggling to seek help and never give up. Well, thank you, Justin. Well, thank you,

to know that I'm a big fan of your podcast and I'm really glad to be here.

My name is Chris Rays and I am here to talk a little bit about manic depression and specifically

what would be manic depression slash schizoaffective disorder.

I put the two together, I don't know if they're necessarily put together in many instances, but the initial

diagnosis that I had back when I was 20 years old was manic depressive slash schizoaffective.

So I went ahead and I've kind of coupled them together and that's sort of how I see myself.

Can you give like a rough definition of skee ineffective disorder?

Meta depressive, I'll start with that because I mean, it seems to be, you know, one of the

main ones out there. And it's not going to be exact because I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist,

but to me it's metadipressives tend to fluctuate between highs and lows and that their moods

tend to destabilize into mania, then on occasionally depression. Along with that, with the

schizoaffective thrown in, there tends to be more schizophrenic-type elements that are

a part of the presentation of symptoms. One of the things that's really important to think

about is the schizophrenic-type elements can also be a part of manic depression depending.

I know there are a lot of

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