Fourteen years after my diagnosis, reflecting on the chaotic search for the right care, the tribe that held me up, and why I’m glad I stayed. The Weight of Untreated Memories
It’s hard to wrap my mind around today, and my heart feels heavy. Facebook memories are an interesting thing. Sometimes they make you reflect on really happy moments, funny memories, or silly things you’ve posted in the past. Other times, they bring up the painful chapters. This time around, I was reminded that I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder around this time 14 years ago. The memories of living untreated are intense. Hearing my diagnosis for the first time, wrestling with the feelings that followed, and speaking hard truths out loud for the very first time—it is a lot to process. Behind the Happy Picture The hardest memory that popped up yesterday widened my eyes and brought tears to my face. Looking at the photo, it looks like a happy family picture from a great concert. But the reality behind it is that I barely remember it because I was so intoxicated and high. I was trying so hard to live on the outside because I was dying on the inside—lost, alone, and drowning in deep depression. Before receiving proper medical care, turning to self-medication was a desperate attempt to cope with a brain that was wired and out of control.
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 My truth about Bipolar I, alcohol, AND why society's refusal to treat co-occurring illness is throwing people awayFor a long time, there was a part of my story I was terrified to tell: the alcohol. When we talk about severe mental illness and suicide, we often stay silent about self-medication because the shame attached to it feels overwhelming. But silence around this reality comes at a fatal cost. I came to the edge of death three times and every single time, I was drinking. I am choosing to share my unfiltered truth today for three reasons:
This is my story of surviving Bipolar I, moving beyond the revolving door, and building a life worth staying alive for. Three Lifelines BrokenThe first time began with a phone call that shattered my last thread of hope. I had finally gotten up the courage to pour my heart out to a resident-in-training at Harvard. When I walked back into my apartment, the phone rang. She said something I will never forget: "Kerry, I am not going to be able to help you." I didn't try to end my life that moment, but I stopped trying to get help. I retreated deep inside myself and into a bottle, using alcohol to drown out the rejection as I spiraled downward until I lost all hope and attempted to end my life.
I remember waking up in the ER with a tube down my throat under glaring, bright white lights. The nurse looked down at me and said, "Lay still. You did this to yourself." When I was finally transported from the ICU to the psychiatric hospital, the doctor informed me he could hold me as long as he wanted after I told him I needed to get back to Harvard to finish my thesis. It was in that moment I realized the truth: I had to lie and do whatever it took just to get out. Lying was a skill I then perfected.  In this piece, Ann Corcoran, RN, MSN, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Shattering Silence Coalition, discusses how the tragedy of the Lindsay Clancy case has brought renewed attention and hope to families caring for a loved one living with severe mental illness by shining a light on psychosis and the urgent need to recognize it as the medical emergency it is. As a nurse and mental health advocate who helps families navigate our fragmented mental health system, I have seen too many individuals experiencing psychosis and their families, failed by the system in Massachusetts and throughout the country. I am grateful that the Lindsay Clancy case has brought an important conversation about psychosis to the forefront.
Whatever one believes about the verdict, there is something we should not lose sight of: psychosis is a medical emergency. What has struck me throughout this case is how both maternal mental health professionals and maternal health professionals have spoken openly about the seriousness of postpartum psychosis and the need to recognize it as a medical emergency. Yet many mental health professionals in our state remain poorly trained in recognizing and responding to psychosis. Families like ours, who care for loved ones living with psychotic illnesses, know firsthand what psychosis can look like. We know that someone can appear completely fine one minute and experience profound delusions or hallucinations the next. A person can carry on a conversation, go to work, and appear rational while simultaneously experiencing delusions or hallucinations that are completely disconnected from reality. Psychosis is not always visible from the outside. Someone may look calm and coherent while their internal experience of reality has become profoundly distorted. They may hear voices others cannot hear, believe things that are demonstrably untrue, or interpret ordinary events in ways that make sense only within the context of their illness. And because they may not recognize that they are ill, their decisions and actions can be driven by a reality that others cannot see. We have seen this play out in our own lives.  Let me begin by mentioning that I was in and out of hospitals over 20 times over a period of 16 years, from 2005 to 2021.
My first hospitalization occurred when I was 16 years old while I was in high school. To be honest, I mostly believed that what I was going through was normal. After all, the abuse and neglect I was dealing with for most of my childhood and teen years was all I knew. It was really until I was about 16 that I realized it was not normal, when a trusted adult told me it was not normal. I feel like that is the first thing that SMI robbed me of --- a normal adolescence. When I was 17, I lost my oldest brother to suicide, and my family became homeless. However, I worked extremely hard in high school. I was waitlisted from Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University and deferred from MIT. I was accepted to 9 universities, and I chose Syracuse University to study Bioengineering. I was getting straight A’s for the first two years of college, with a GPA of 3.986. However, I struggled tremendously while in a summer internship. The beginning of severe mental illness was starting to really get bad, added to the PTSD of the trauma I experienced throughout my life. When I was in my third year at Syracuse University, I jumped off a building. I continue to thank God that I did not suffer a spinal cord injury.  "When I was 17 they told me my mind was broken." This is how I started my monologue as part of the talent portion of competition at Miss Volunteer America, one of the most prestigious stages in pageantry. The Silent Beginning of PsychosisMy dance with schizophrenia began at 15 when I had a visual hallucination in my loft bedroom in rural North Carolina. I saw a deer who spoke to me, telling me I was God and instructing me to post on Twitter. I obliged. Most of the tweets were gibberish, but I found them helpful later on because they provided an exact timestamp documenting my first break from reality. I didn't know what had happened. I had never received a formal mental health education, I didn't know what psychosis was, and I certainly didn't think I had schizophrenia based on the extreme portrayals I had seen in movies and headlines. I just knew something about me was not normal. I hid my episodes from my parents. I grew up with the most supportive and unconditionally loving parents you can imagine, but because of media portrayals of mental institutions, I was terrified of being hospitalized involuntarily. I spent the next two years isolating myself when I felt episodes coming on, or blaming them on severe anxiety if they happened in front of my family. By the time I was 17, the boundaries of my reality were dissolving. During a beach trip with friends, I spent the night locked on a balcony, crying and hallucinating a man trying to take photos of me. One of my friends told me I had "ruined the vibe" of the night. They blacklisted me after that. When I returned home, the detachment from reality, confusion, delusions, and auditory hallucinations grew severe enough that my worried parents encouraged me to see a psychiatrist. The Standard of Clinical Neglect Honoring the Life of Salvatore Colella --- As Told by His Sister, Caprice Palumbo My brother Salvatore was so much more than the crisis that took his life. He was a son, a brother, and a person who was deeply loved by his family. He had a life, a future, and people who wanted nothing more than to see him get the help he needed.
In the months before his death, our family watched Salvatore experience a severe psychiatric and substance use crisis. We saw the warning signs. We saw the hallucinations, the significant changes in his behavior, his substance use, and the way he was losing the ability to recognize the severity of what was happening to him. We tried to get him help. We called. We advocated. We showed up. We repeatedly shared what we were seeing with healthcare providers because we knew Salvatore. We knew who he was before the illness took hold, and we knew that something was seriously wrong. But despite our efforts, we felt our concerns were not fully heard or incorporated into decisions about his care and discharge planning. Salvatore’s journey through the healthcare system was not one isolated event. It was a series of moments where our family hoped the next encounter would finally lead to the care and support he needed.  My son was two years old when I began having concerns about his unusual behaviors. As a young mother, I reassured myself by thinking, “It’s okay, he is just being himself.” However, by the age of four, significant behavioral outbursts began to emerge. By five, when he started school, I was told he “had to be medicated for his own good,” rather than having his mental, emotional, or intellectual needs properly addressed. That marked the beginning of what felt like a never-ending cycle of appointments, negative behaviors, and school visits.
From the start, he was given the common diagnosis of ADHD and prescribed Adderall. Instead of improving, he spiraled further out of control. I attended IEP meeting after IEP meeting, pleading for meaningful support for my child. He was referred to therapists and psychiatrists for testing, and the list of diagnoses continued to grow while his medications were repeatedly changed. Eventually, he was diagnosed with severe dysphonetic dyslexia. Despite this, the IEP meetings only became more difficult, as the school continually failed to provide the services he truly needed. The focus always returned to his behavior — that he could not sit still or follow directions.  Much of my life has felt like a rollercoaster—not the kind you ride over and over with friends because it's fun, but the old, rickety one-seater that rattles with every turn while you close your eyes and pray the ride will end soon. Mental illness was the driving force of this ride. And it could have ended very badly. ‘Could have’ is key here. I overcame fears. I had the support of others around me. And I made it through the days I hope I’ll never have to relive. Here is my story.
Like many, I experienced the typical trauma of being picked on at a young age. From other kids throwing remarks because I was the chubby kid, to the not so funny videos my brother’s friends made of me during their drunken skip day. The events contributed to my early-aged episodes of depression. Throw in the fact that I had open heart surgery at the age of five, and my childhood was already far from ideal. Some might call me a momma’s boy, but I won’t apologize for being pampered as the baby of the family. It definitely helped me get through the early years. Heart surgery was just the beginning of my hospital days. When I was in the second grade, I broke my wrist on the growth plate. Five years later, I had to have three inches removed from another part of my arm, in hopes of balancing out the stunted growth in my wrist. This two-week stay in the hospital was not exactly a vacation.  Life doesn’t always happen the way you expect. At 18, I had the world ahead of me. I told myself that by 21 I’d have a career, a degree, and a girlfriend. I thought about travel, kids, and a bright future. But life had other plans. About a month after my 21st birthday, I found myself locked inside a psychiatric hospital for 17 days on a 51/50 hold. I had no idea what a "psychotic break" actually meant, because in my eyes, I was fine. Everyone else had the problem. Not me. Part 1: Surf, School, Sleep & RepeatBefore my mind fractured, life was simple. Aside from classic teenage angst, my daily loop was surf, school, sleep, and repeat. I had friends I loved, a good life, and a general sense of whatever happens, I’ll figure it out. Up until then, I’d been able to navigate life's obstacles and bounce back quickly. It was easy to assume things would just stay that way. There was nothing a good night with friends, a solid surf session, and maybe a little bit of bud couldn’t fix.
My brain had other plans.  This is the third installment of the NSSC In Justice series—a collaborative chronicle exposing the structural failures of America's crisis containment loop. While Part 1 by Carmen Facciolo laid bare the agonizing choice families face when forced to wait for a loved one's catastrophe, and Part 2 by Kerry Martin exposed the terrifying reality of surviving a brain in active psychosis while being abandoned on a street corner, Executive Director Ann Corcoran steps forward in Part 3 to break down the hard, human arithmetic of a system designed to wait. In our first two installments, we argued that mental health reform and public safety reform are not two conversations — they are one. We made the case that America keeps building systems that demand catastrophe before they respond, and that compassion is not standing by while a person deteriorates toward homelessness, incarceration, or death.
That was the argument. This is the arithmetic. When you count the people moving through the system we have built — the jails, the emergency rooms, the encampments, the morgue — one undeniable pattern emerges. We are not running a treatment system that occasionally fails. We are running a containment system that works exactly as designed, and the design is lethal. What "Waiting" Actually Costs Start with the final number. The United States records roughly 49,000 deaths by suicide every year, and about half of those who die have a known mental health condition at the time of death. Major depressive disorder alone is implicated in 50 to 60 percent of suicides where a psychiatric driver is present. People living with bipolar disorder face a lifetime suicide risk ten to thirty times higher than the general population. These are not deaths from untreatable conditions. They follow the same script: escalating signs, a family asking for help, a system replying that the threshold for intervention has not been met. That threshold, too often, turns out to be death itself. |
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