The challenge of coping with a mental illness while in university is one of the issues I’m most concerned about, since it’s something I spent eight years doing, sometimes well, other times not well at all. Since I don’t want to write a half-assed post about such an important subject, I’m not going to do any thinking tonight and instead provide you with a few links:

Susan posts about The College Mental Health Crisis and luckymud mentions an interesting tidbit re: same.

Syd and Nurse Ratched worry that the Virginia Tech shootings will, in Nurse Ratched’s words, “feed into the belief that everyone with a mental illness is a danger to society. This belief is the farthest thing from the truth, but unfortunately, many people suffering from mental illnesses are going to suffer as a consequence of yesterday’s tragic events.” I would be very surprised if she and Syd were wrong.

Note to self: on the subject of protecting students vs. civil liberties, I must remember to blog someday about How I Almost Got Kicked out of My University Residence for Cutting Myself. It’s a much less interesting story than you’d think, barely a story at all, so don’t get excited.

But I’m still bitter about it.

As for basic information on coping with mental illness throughout your post-secondary education, especially in Canada, there is Your Education - Your Future, a guide to college and university for students with psychiatric disabilities from the Canadian Mental Health Association. It was created in 2004 and isn’t entirely up-to-date, though — for instance, I noticed that the information about grants for students with disabilities is out of date. Try this page for correct information about the Canada Study Grant for the Accommodation of Students with Permanent Disabilities and the Canada Access Grant for Students with Permanent Disabilities. Yes, people with bipolar disorder are eligible for the second one even if they don’t have any learning disabilities or stuff like that. And it can really come in handy when you’re on a locked ward and the person in the registrar’s office that you talk to on the phone says if you drop two courses when you get out of the hospital, you can get your money back for them even if it’s after the official deadline, and then when you get discharged the day after the deadline, you drop the two courses but still have to pay $1600 for these courses you aren’t taking, even though the person you talked to said you wouldn’t have to.

Stephany at soulful sepulcher listed my blog as one of her five choices for a Thinking Blogger Award. Thanks, Stephany. Since I know that some blogs have been mentioned multiple times in this meme, I’m going to attempt to list five blogs that make me think, but that I don’t believe have already gotten Thinking Blogger Awards. If I’m wrong and they have received them, well, they’re all excellent blogs, which is why I’m listing them, of course, so go visit them anyway! Oh, yeah, these are in alphabetical order.

1. Bipolar Wellness Writer - Eloquent, and focuses a lot on two of the things that interest me the most — healing and writing. Don’t get me wrong; I love good writing about illness, but there’s so much less good writing about wellness out there in any format that I really appreciate it when I find some.
2. my pockets hurt - Juniper is engaging and honest in her blog about coping with borderline personality disorder and life in general. I love reading her posts on any topic — working for a tutoring company, running into annoying people at the laundromat, whatever.
3. Pole to Polar: The secret life of a manic-depressive - I don’t know how she does it. Seaneen’s posts are so long and so frequent, but they still manage to be jam-packed with interesting, thought-provoking content. I like to imagine that I would write posts like she does if I had any patience or attention span.
4. Roller Coaster - Honestly, I’ve only skimmed over some of the posts in Marja’s blog, because I just discovered it today, but I’ve owned a copy of her book for years and I love her book, so I already know I like her writing. The book is actually one of the main inspirations for the title of this blog! Many of Marja’s posts are about bipolar disorder and Christian faith.
5. Spanglemonkey - Speaking of “I don’t know how she does it,” Jo is one of the most prolific bloggers I’ve ever come across. Multiple posts every day and she has been doing this for years. About bipolar disorder and BPD, parenting, writing, life, the universe, and everything.

These are the rules of the Thinking Blogger Awards:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Marissa at depression introspection posts about the Virginia Tech shootings, bullying, compassion, and prevention. It’s titled The Most Controversial Post You’ll Ever Read Today, but it’s hard for me to see it as controversial, when I agree with much of what she says, especially the parts about Columbine. When I was in junior high, I never considered killing the people who bullied me, but I certainly understood where Harris and Klebold were coming from. What I’ve never understood is why school shooters also tend to kill absolutely anyone that’s around — why wouldn’t they just target the bullies? Why do they also kill people who’ve never done anything to them?

Gianna at Bipolar Blast posts about labels: Patient, Client, Consumer, User, Ex-User, Ex-Patient, Psychiatric Survivor, the Psychiatrized. My big problem in finding a term to use is that I’d like for there to be an umbrella term for those of us who are “mentally interesting” or who don’t believe they are but who have been in the psychiatric system anyway. I am currently in the psychiatric system and I’m not looking to leave it, so for me, that rules out a bunch of those terms like ex-patient. I’m not technically anti-psychiatry, but I’m definitely against bad psychiatry, and there’s an alarming amount of it out there. I’m not a Psychiatric Survivor, I’m a Survivor of Bad Psychiatry. Anyway, all of these terms focus on the relationship between the individual and the psychiatric system, and I’m more interested in finding one for just the individual, who, in his or her search for wellness, relates to many other people and institutions — family, friends, work, school, society as a whole, etc. — and isn’t defined solely by his or her relationship to psychiatry.

The thing that really bothers me about the term “consumer” is that it makes it seem as if we purchase a product and then do nothing else to further our wellness, that we aren’t active participants at all. Of course, this is what some people do — take the drugs and don’t think about eating and sleeping properly, having good relationships with others, expressing themselves creatively, and all of that. “Consumer” takes the fact that I work damn hard in all areas of my life and reduces it to a simple financial transaction, and that is grossly inaccurate.

You know you are hypomanic when…

…you have thirty-two tabs open in your browser window because you keep jumping from topic to topic, page to page, yet you can’t bring yourself to close any of them.