What It Takes to Be a Mental Health Advocate: An Interview With Christina Huff

Christina Huff At one point Christina Huff was living her dream: thriving as a paralegal in Chicago and newly in love. Five years and one divorce later, she’s still piecing together the debris – living with bipolar disorder and accepting a different kind of life. She has translated her passion for law to mental health advocacy, helping others rise from difficulty with gracefulness and determination, and is a beautiful model of turning pain into service. Living with bipolar, anxiety, eating disorders, and chronic pain, she beautifully weaves bits of her life and advice from other warriors on her site, Bipolar Hot Mess, ranked number five out of the top 100 bipolar blogs on feedspot, and on her other site is Askabipolar.com. I asked Christina about her life as an advocate, advice for persons for bipolar, and where she finds the strength to overcome her many challenges. Therese: What made you want to become a bipolar advocate? Christina: When I was first diagnosed in 2006, I didn’t know anyone who had bipolar and I didn’t know anything about the illness. My immediate response was turning to the internet to look and search for information and first-person accounts so I knew what to expect. But, to my disappointment, I found very little. I did find a website called Ask A Bipolar and so I followed it for a few days and searched it. They put up an ad that they were looking for new authors and one of the qualifications was that you had to have bipolar. I applied, and then wit...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Bipolar Interview Mental Health and Wellness Peer Support Source Type: blogs