Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretum
Genetic, I am a premed student. If I tell the admissions committees at the med schools that I am going to apply to that I am bipolar, I will be immediately thrown in the reject pile. So I think that stigma is sadly alive and well among the well-educated.
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At the same time, Secretum, people like Dr. Kay Jamison Redfield who is bipolar and has written about this disease and teaches at a university about bipolar illness has been told by her associates "just be sure to take your medications".
So there are different approaches to this depending on where you live,
what university you are trying to attend and how the board of directors feel about bipolar illness. Frankly, if I were a pre-med student and learned that bipolar patients would be dropped, I'd choose another university for my training (for example, the one in which Dr. Jamison teaches).
Since the disease is a mood disorder and not an intellectual disorder, I
suspect that many universities and colleges would be happy to have a bright bipolar patient who is properly medicated.
Thanks for your response. It gives the opportunity to present both views.
My view is that it is not "alive and well" but that it is prevalent where there is much ignorance or intolerance. A medical school is not necessarily without its own flaws in human compassion.
Like some of the others who express their view, if a person rejects me because of my illness, I do not need that friendship. I've never lived a life
of wistful thinking; I've worked hard to achieve what I've been able to accomplish with or without some types of friendship.
Why we want to take so much blame is beyond me. I agree with the member who wrote that we are not responsible for the illness we were born with; we are responsible to make sure that it is properly medicated and that we do no harm to others. I suspect that many have lived that life and that, if the truth were known, we may have caused less pain in life for others than many who are considered "normal"--which is simply a term. (Nobody can really define normality adequately, since everyone is flawed in some form or another.)
I really refuse to live my life based on somebody else's opinion of who I am.
And I firmly think that we should not judge ourselves or others. We need to live our lives based on our deepest principles, in my view. With that in mind, I think we make a pretty good job of managing things well.
I'd call it independence.
Genetic