Before I was diagnosed bipolar, I was the head nurse at an assisted living facility where there was this one patient/resident who had just about every known psychiatric diagnosis (EXCEPT bipolar). The one the doctors finally settled on was Factitious Disorder, which is basically malingering...IOW, they said he was faking mental illness. Accordingly, he drove me and my staff nuts. He was constantly complaining about the voices in his head telling him to do stupid, destructive stuff like burn himself with cigarettes, start fires in the laundry room and hide himself in his room while refusing to eat, drink or take his meds. Nobody believed him because he had that Factitious Disorder diagnosis. But he scared the staff, and he scared the other residents too. And I couldn't get him out of the building despite the fact that he was totally inappropriate for assisted living.

Then I got my bipolar DX, and everything changed. I started actually spending some quality time with this fellow and got to know him pretty well. I learned that he truly was severely mentally ill and I fought for him long after his social worker, his PCP and even his psychiatrist had given up on him. When he ripped his arm open with a steak knife from the community dining room, I was finally able to get him admitted to a psych unit, where it was quickly determined that AL was not the place for him but that he'd be better suited to a group home where there were other mentally ill people who needed some care but didn't need to be locked up.

So yeah, I think having a mental illness myself made me more empathetic and more compassionate towards others who suffer. I'm normally a pretty compassionate person or I'd never have gone into nursing, but BP made me a better nurse, I think.