MHM Magazine

Issue 2 | 2025 | MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS | 27 MHM I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 disorder in 2009 when I was 19 years old, my first year at university. I secretly overhead a private conversation between family members about the psychiatrist’s suspicion of a personality disorder, around the same time as my first psychiatric admission to hospital after threatening to commit suicide. Fast forward, I could no longer afford to stay on a medical aid, so my first psychiatrist very quickly did a referral to my municipal clinic’s primary psychiatric department. I got an appointment but when I visited the clinic to start the transfer of care process there was no one in the office, so walking out of the building seemed like the natural thing to do, considering how my first psychiatrist ended things. She constantly reminded me that with my condition and periods of instability, studying towards my teaching degree was wishful thinking. Luckily for me, I had a repeat script that had already been filled. I carried the plastic bag of pills to university on that ordinary day, to make me numb. I was slipping in and out of my body without warning or temporary breaks of relief. I poured these pills into my clammy, shaking hand and swallowed nine of these deceptively innocent looking white pills, with what little water was left in the stale cooler I carried. I don’t remember what happened next, just that when I did open my eyes I was in a strange bed in a stadium-bright room with people in stamped hospital gowns, and that a very nice lady was taking good care to ask me questions that no one ever wants to answer. My impulsive suicide attempt was what got me help at a government academic hospital. One thing I remember about getting treatment at this facility was that when a psychiatrist couldn’t help you and you kept coming back with the same symptoms, you were ‘manipulative’. Mind you, the only ‘real’ information I ever had about mental illness was from watching movies like ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ and ‘Girl Interrupted’, neither of which I saw with an adult. Movies like these and too many YouTube videos informed my perception of mental illness – never in the correct context! All this obsessive watching and listening to thousands of hours of recordings and videos made me spill out borderline personality disorder to my second, more progressive psychiatrist. She was not much older than me – academic, studious and open BECOMING HER LIVING WITH... MHM | 2025 | Volume 12 | Issue 2 | Living With MHM