NYT writer shares personal story of mental illness

For Lizzie Simon, a struggle with mental illness wasn’t a setback, but instead empowered her with compassion and resilience.

Simon, the author of Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D, recounted her personal story of mental illness to a small but attentive crowd in Claudia Cohen Hall on Tuesday night.

She was brought to campus by Active Minds, a group that promotes positive conversation about mental health. Active Minds was started by a Penn student in 2001 and has since spread to college campuses nationwide.

Simon, a Rhode Island native, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was 17, and she recalls those years as the worst times of her life. She suffered episodes of depression, dread and anxiety and even attempted suicide.

“I became psychotic. I saw microphones in the corners of rooms. I envisioned that the CIA was chasing me. I thought I was a cat,” she said.

She compared having the illness to being a hockey goalie with three teams charging against him. The first team is the illness itself. The second is the mental health care system, in which many patients do not have access to health insurance and misdiagnosis is very common. The third team is society’s stigma associated with mental illness, seen especially in Hollywood films and the media.

Detour was inspired by a mental illness advertisement Simon saw when she was 23 years old.

“It was the first positive mental illness campaign I have ever seen, and at that moment, I knew I wanted to travel, find more positive examples and put them in a book,” she said.

Detour was published in 2002. Simon is now an arts journalist at The New York Times.

Simon said, “medications can’t cure shame, anger, loneliness, distrust and fear of a limited future.” Simon said she wants people to respond to mental illness patients with dignity, empathy and respect.

College senior Will Russell said, “We all have things we need to work through, but seeing [Simon] being able to contextualize and cope with her illness was very powerful.”

Carolyn Winslow, a College senior and current vice president of Active Minds, brought Simon to campus. This is Active Minds’ first event of the year, but Winslow hopes to increase the group’s presence on campus in the future.

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