Have you ever wondered what happy set of circumstances left you with what you call your life the way you know it? I mean, have you ever wondered why you're left handed over right handed when no one else in your family is? Or why your whole family wears glasses and you don't? Why did you not develop schizophrenia in your twenties--or, why did you? Or why we seem to get more depressed these days than people did in the past? What is going on inside our bodies that causes mental disorders to grow like a cancer?

There is much development in the genetic field that is helping scientists and psychiatrists start to form pictures about the deep seated illnesses of Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar Disease, and Major Depression. The information is fascinating, but we're here to talk in the trenches. Sure, learning the genetic markings of some mental illnesses will help doctors learn how to treat a certain person according to their gene markings, but what of the people that don't fit those criteria?

I had my first major depressive episode in January of 2009. I'd been diagnosed with cancer and was in the hospital after surgical removal of the golf ball sized tumor. I was set to go home, but complications reared their ugly heads and I ended up with another major surgery to the abdomen, along with a pretty severe case of depression. I slowly withdrew from the world, even from the already isolating world of a hospital. One day one of my doctors came in and told me I had to make a choice, right now. Live or die, because if you don't choose to live now, you won't make it out of this hospital alive.

We fought. "I'm not depressed."

"Oh, you don't think you're depressed?"

"No, not really." Do you see the stigma working inside of me without my even being able to acknowledge it? Here my doctor was telling me I was spiraling into death, but I refused to accept that I had a mental illness. I had worked in a psychiatric hospital, for goodness sake. I knew was depression looked like.

This is the worst part about the mental illness stigma. When a person can't allow themselves to accept that they need help, they'll never get help, and things just continue to spiral down, down, down, until something serious happens. Someone dies.

So let's go beyond the fiction. Let's learn more about what our experiences are with mental illness. Let's talk with our friends about it. Let's talk with our family about it. Let's get out there and break the stigma.

If YOU would like to help break the stigma, please sign up below. I promise not to flood your email box with spam or lots of uninteresting newsletters. In return for your pledge, you will receive a PDF of what you can do for yourself and your family--just tell me where to send it. After that, emails will be sent once or twice a month with pertinent information on how you can help stop the stigma. You can cancel at any time. It's all FREE.