I know that as a semi-public person with bipolar disorder I am supposed to beam hope. I am supposed to remind people of it, write about it, speak about it, and give it to everyone wrapped in a shiny happy wrapper. I don’t do this. There is, without doubt, hope to be had, out there in the bipolar treatment world, but that doesn’t mean I particularly feel too strongly about it personally.

If you’ve been diagnosed with a major mental illness, you’re probably not leaving the doctor’s office without a prescription in-hand. There’s a good reason for this: people only get help when they’re in bad shape. When people are in bad shape, medications work the most quickly and the most reliably (except electroconvulsive therapy, but that isn’t generally a first-line treatment for a host of reasons). So, if you’ve just been handed you first prescription with incomprehensible handwriting and a drug name with too many syllables, what’s a person to do? Well, you can start by following these Psych Med Commandments.

There are exactly two settings on my dial: blow your mind and blow your brains out. I’m bipolar. We’re like that. Not surprisingly, the sex mostly happens on the blow your mind setting.

Those of you who follow me may have gleaned that I've been having trouble getting a psychiatrist. Basically, I was finally allowed to see one and she threw up her hands, told me to give up and that I was never going to get any better. This is one of the worst things I have ever been told, and personally, I think is unacceptable on pretty much every level. However, yesterday I managed to see someone new, and this poses its own challenges.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article on the worst things to say to a person with a mental illness. This ended up becoming a very popular article. I think that’s because most of us have heard some or all of these dismissive things from people in our lives. But a commenter posed an excellent question: What are the best things to say to someone with a mental illness?

I mentioned in my last post how it is the best of times and the worst of times for mental illness and treatment education. There are no shortage of online sources of mental illness information: websites, discussion groups, blogs, news, self-assessment tests and everything else in between. It's as if we can diagnose ourselves and pick our own treatment all without leaving the warmth of our laptop on our thighs. But the anonymity of the internet means that everyone you meet might just be a 12-year-old girl with a big vocabulary and no idea what she's talking about. So just who are you supposed to trust for mental illness information?

The internet is a fabulous place where everyone gets to share their story for all to see. The internet is a horrible place where everyone gets to share their story for all to see. It is the best of times; it is the worst of times, and nowhere is this more evident than in the deluge of mental health information.

Next week is Mental Illness Awareness Week in Canada and the US. It's our week to get out, speak up and be heard. It's our week not to be ashamed of our illness or the illness of our loved ones. It's our week to march, write, Twitter, Facebook, talk and tell politicians how important issues of mental illness are. But what if you don't want the world knowing you have a mental illness?

How are you? This is one of the most disingenuous, lie-provoking, overused sentences in the English language. How are you? We say it to fill time and pretend that we care about people whom we obviously don't. As no one is interested in actually knowing the answer, I have a series of pat answers I typically give. Snazzy. Fabulous. Wonderful. Delightful. Sparkly. Peaches and cream. You? But the truth of the matter is, when someone asks how I am, even if they really wanted to know, it would make no difference, because really, I have no idea.

It is often the case that those around a person with bipolar disorder spot the disorder before the person themselves does. That’s pretty understandable as our actions are always louder from the outside. Not to mention our brain, which is supposed to be paying attention to our behaviors, is the thing that’s sick. So, you know, we miss stuff. Crazy tends to obscure reality. But what if you think a person has bipolar disorder and the person won’t listen? In this case, there are really only three things you can do.