5280 Magazine ran a story last month about Nathan Dunlap, the now 34-year-old death row inmate convicted in the 1993 Chuck E. Cheese murders of four people. The story focused on a fact little known at the time of the trial: Nathan suffers from bipolar disorder. The issue was not discussed at trial, and some in the legal community believe the introduction of such evidence could have saved Nathan from the death sentence he now faces.
My heart sank as I read this story, as it has in reading innumerable stories before about perpetrators of horrendous crimes who suffer from bipolar disorder.
It is not that these facts are untrue, or distorted. It is not that I don't feel a measure of sympathy for Dunlap, whose childhood story is a series of tragedies large and small.
It is that stories such as these are among the only times bipolar disorder makes headlines.
People who suffer from the rarest extremes of bipolar disorder occasionally commit horrible crimes. But while the disorder has a wide range of effects - incapacitating some such that they cannot work or otherwise function in society - most people diagnosed with bipolar disorder are anything but violent. The greatest pain they inflict, the greatest danger they pose, is upon and to them.
They are everyday people who work, recreate, parent, attend school, tend to their homes, balance budgets and take daily medication. People who sit next to you on the light rail or in the office, who coach your child's soccer team, clean your house, and sign your paychecks. People too afraid, too proud or too private to let others know their condition.
They manage their moods privately, some days struggling mightily to keep their heads above water. They may suffer long-term, crushing depression, bouts of high anxiety and racing thoughts, but they do not violently extend their pain to others.
My first go-round with bipolar disorder, more than 20 years ago, ended with a psychotic breakdown and hospitalization. So confused and detached from reality that I could not make sound decisions for myself, I was declared "a danger to myself or others." The court committed me to the care of my home state of Wisconsin for six months.
Most people diagnosed with bipolar disorder aren't hospitalized. But for those who are, this declaration of "danger to self or others" is not unusual. Violence directed outward is rarely the reason. Most often, it stems from delusional and suicidal thoughts.
Post-recovery, I decided I would be a role model for others suffering from the same problem. I envisioned myself speaking to other young adults at high schools and colleges, offering my story as proof that a diagnosis of mental illness is not the end of one's world. That you can instead emerge better and stronger.
I was, in short, going to change the world. I thought this was my purpose in life, the reason I had gone through such a jarring experience.
But this idea quickly fizzled. I moved from my native Wisconsin - where my breakdown occurred - to Colorado and soon decided it was better to put the past, and my medication, behind me. To pretend it never happened, was not even a relevant factor in my life.
I did so with moderate success until about 15 years later, when a crippling, 18-month depression closed in around me, one not followed by the euphoria of mania that is typically part of the bipolar mood cycle.
This bout cost me a relationship and almost, my job. After months of trial and error with a variety of medications, the depression lifted, and along with it my denial.
I've tried since to fulfill what I still believe is my purpose in this life. I've facilitated and served on boards for groups that support those with depression and bipolar disorder. It shames and disappoints me to say that after a few months, I resigned. As it turns out, being in close, frequent proximity to those enduring profound emotional pain threatens my own mental well-being.
To my further shame, I know that what I want most is to distance myself from this 20-plus-years-old diagnosis. It's been eight years since my last depression. Why do I insist on carrying this label, even making it public as I do on this site? I worry selfishly that someone - a potential future employer, friend or prospective flame - may Google me and discover this fact of my life.
But stories like Dunlap's remind me the only way to fight the stigma is to embrace the label and share my story. They bolster that long-ago idea that there is a purpose to even the worst of life's experiences, a way to re-form them into something good.
With age and life experience, the once-lofty goals that surrounded that idea are more modest and realistic. I realize now I can't change the world. But maybe I can change, or give hope to, the lives of a few.