In January of his senior year of high school, Ross Szabo woke up to find the shoelaces removed from his shoes, no drawstrings in his sweatshirt, no sheets on his bed, and someone assigned to keep an eye on him 24 / 7.
After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 16, he had suffered a depressive episode during his senior year and tried to kill himself. Szabo was waking up at a psychiatric hospital after being given a medication that had knocked him out.
In therapy, the patients at the hospital were asked to share their personal stories.
"The stories before mine were filled with really traumatic things and they asked me why I was there and I didn't know what to say," he said. "... I never imagined ending up in a psych ward at that age, so they said if you don't know why you're here, why don't you tell us about your life?"
"'My name's Ross,'" Szabo said. "'I was president of my class. I played varsity basketball for three years. I'm a member of SAD. I'm a member of the Peer Helper. I volunteered five years for the Special Olympics. I attended the National Youth Leadership Forum. I have a 3.8 GPA.' And I stopped, and I felt really stupid because the life I was describing was my external life.
"It was my college resume," he said. "It wasn't my internal life. It wasn't the reason I was there. If I wanted to talk about my internal life, I should have said 'Hi, my name's Ross, and I hate myself.'"
Today, Szabo is a public speaker who advocates for challenging the stigma surrounding mental health problems, encouraging others to seek help, and providing mental health education to young people. Thursday, he spoke after lunch at the Integrated Behavioral Health Conference, hosted by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources and held at the Charleston Civic Center this week.
Addressing hundreds of medical professionals, substance abuse prevention specialists, educators and others about his journey, Szabo used his personal story to relay the importance of accepting the reality of a mental health diagnosis, and the work recovery will involve. He also shared some of the tools for dealing with a mental health disorder, including the development of positive coping mechanisms.
Bipolar disorder, anxiety, addiction and depression run in his family. At age 11, Szabo visited his older brother in the hospital after his brother had a manic episode.
"When I got to see my brother, I felt relieved because he had no oxygen mask on his face," he said. "He had no IV in his arm. He had no cast on any part of his body, so I thought he must be OK.
"I walked over to my brother to say hello. He didn't know who I was. He didn't know who my parents were. He didn't know who my other brother was. He didn't even really think he was in a hospital, and so our stay was really quick."
He said everyone in his family was crying as they left.
"I wasn't crying so my mom leaned down to me and said 'it's OK for you to cry about this,'" he said. "I asked my mother if my brother was going to die, and she said 'no.' I looked back up at her and said 'if he's not going to die, I'm not going to cry about this.
"This must be something he can get through.'"
Szabo's brother dedicated himself to taking care of himself, including taking his medication and living a healthy lifestyle, shortly after the psychotic break and became a successful professor of astronomy.
"That's not my story," Szabo said. "That's my brother's story."
Szabo's grandmother and grandfather died in the months after his brother's episode, followed by the death of a close friend in a car accident, causing a "triggering time" for someone with a genetic predisposition to mental illness.
Drinking became his coping mechanism of choice. At 16, he started showing classic symptoms of bipolar disorder, a mental illness marked by shifts in mood and energy that disrupt a person's ability to function.
Szabo went days without sleep and his mind raced through eight to 10 thoughts a minute. At 17, he started getting so angry he would break his knuckles and toes punching and kicking things, hear voices telling him to kill himself and his family, and hallucinate people chasing him.
He continued to self-medicate with drinking until one day in college when he hit rock bottom. After having about 13 shots of vodka in an hour, he went out and drank some more, then woke up at 12 a.m. to find he had been passed out for 22 hours.
"When I woke up that night, I looked in the mirror and I started crying and I said to myself either you're going to continue this and you're going to die, or you're going to have to change," he said. "So at age 22, after passing out for 22 hours was the first night I accepted having a problem."
Szabo decided to try to learn to like himself by taking care of himself. He stopped smoking marijuana, started going to bed at the same time every night and started waking up at the same time every day, started exercising and started trying to eat healthier.
"I didn't choose to have bipolar disorder but I could choose to change the way I coped with it," he said. "I could stop hiding my emotions. I could stop drinking myself to the point of passing out. I could stop self-medicating. I could start writing and talking to my friends and being honest in therapy and working on those coping skills."
Szabo listed examples of positive coping mechanisms, like therapy, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, reading, writing, playing music or participating in sports, and examples of negative coping mechanisms, including drugs, alcohol or isolation.
He admitted that learning to turn to new coping mechanisms hasn't been easy. When his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer (which she recovered from), his first instinct was to drink. He noted that patterns developed at an early age are hard to break, and pointed to brain chemistry.
But the key to building new pathways is to become aware of them, Szabo said.
"Today I shared with you my personal story and I know a lot of you are providers and a lot of you are family members involved in different ways," he said. "But I hope that no matter who you are, when it's most important to you, when you really need to, I hope you will share your story."
Bipolar disorder, and other mental health conditions, are treatable.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, bipolar disorder affects 2.6 percent of adults. A number of medications are used to help control symptoms, while therapists can also help those who have the disorder learn healthier coping mechanisms. Left untreated, the disease can increase the risk of suicide.
Those in crisis should call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
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