I recently submitted this to “End the Stigma.” It can also be viewed on their website, here.

After I graduated from the University of Cincinnati, I spent two years writing about my unexpected and full recovery from schizophrenia, which eventually became the book Mind Estranged. During those two years of writing, I spoke confidentially to groups of mental health professionals about my journey to recovery. As a speaker, I found audiences were eager to hear my story. But, unfortunately, when I tried disclosing my illness and the journey to my recovery with my friends, almost no one understood. After I disclosed that I had suffered from schizophrenia and recovered, some friends went so far as to have no interest in seeing me again, and even seemed afraid. Years went by where I lived a dual life: during my confidential interviews in front of groups of physicians, nothing was held back. In my personal life, none of my new friends (mostly, new friends from the university) had any idea what I had gone through. It felt like I lived in the shadows, with no friends who really understood the events of my life.

Since its publication last summer, my memoir has brought success in both my professional and personal life. Mind Estranged has thirty-nine five star reviews on amazon.com, and I have been invited to speak for many more audiences, both academic and religious. But more importantly, in my personal life, I now am finding encouragement from the same people who were once not able to understand. Since I have unreservedly shared the most intimate details of my life in my memoir, I have won true friends. Today, living in the shadows is a part of my past. I hope that, someday, the mentally ill will be able to freely disclose without losing treasured relationships. I also hope that my memoir will reduce the heavy stigma associated with mental illness.