I was raised by social climbing parents who didn't ever admit that we had problems in the family. The day I was diagnosed bipolar I could practically hear them spinning in their graves... we supposedly didn't have mental illness in our lineage, even though one grandmother spent time in a mental hospital after a "nervous breakdown" and most of the rest of them were upper-class lushes.

What's sad is, something's been wrong with me since I was 10 years old and suffered my first depression, and nothing was ever done about it till I finally asked my PCP for help and he sent me to a psychiatrist. That was 43 years I went undiagnosed and untreated. By the time I did get into treatment, my disease was so severe it took almost three years and a hospitalization to get me straightened out.

Still, sometimes I feel that old familiar urge to keep a stiff upper lip even in my pdoc's office. Fortunately he is VERY good at sniffing out when something is wrong, and he adjusts meds and does therapy accordingly. The way my illness progressed so fast, I'd probably be dead from suicide now. THAT'S what hiding from the truth does. It's so destructive and people just don't realize what they do when they urge us to buck up, be strong, keep our illness to ourselves and so on. It's even worse when we do it to ourselves.