After battling illness for years, Nancy Karipa tested positive for HIV in 1999. She had just given birth to her first child. It was a crossroads moment for me, with the fear of denial, but I chose action, Karipa, who is now in her 50s, said at an Aids awareness event in Papua New Guinea's capital Port Moresby in December. She and the baby received treatment, and her child remains healthy.
Most people think the hardest part of a mental health crisis is the illness itself. In my case that would entail the acute experience of psychotic depression. And it is often true that acute mental ill health is extraordinarily disorienting and frightening. I wouldn't wish my previous symptoms of psychotic depression on anyone and they have been the hardest experience of my life.
In the 1980s, one of my psychology professors at the University of Toronto advocated against using labels for psychological or psychiatric diagnoses. "Why not?" I questioned. "How else will we know what illness they have? Labels being bad sounds like psychological mumbo jumbo." By the end of that school year, I understood how labels stigmatize and limit recovery. Humans use labels to distinguish between themselves and those not like them.