standing strong for 5 years

On May 25, 2017, I launched The Standing Strong Blog. A blog where anyone, no matter who you are or where you’re from, could share their story of living with mental illness and be assured they would not be judged. Since our inception, we have featured stories from all around the world. We have highlighted […]

Dark Horse: Kim’s Journey With Depression

**I wrote this on the evening of August 11, 2014. Shortly after the news broke that Robin Williams had died by suicide. This post is the first time I ever shared with my friends and family about my mental health. I would end up being diagnosed with Bipolar type II in 2018, explaining a short […]

Surviving PTSD – Jenna’s story

How I have survived years of trauma and changed my story to change my life… It is a never ending battle living with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), and I haveunfortunately suffered from it most of my life. I can look back now and have a little chuckle to myself at all the people […]

Living with Complex PTSD – Claire’s story

I wish I could tell you when exactly it started, but I can’t. My memory is patchy at best and I have many what I call “Kodak moments” of my life, snapshots but no real context. I didn’t even know during my 20’s why I couldn’t remember most of my childhood. Those times where your […]

Acknowledging Children’s Mental Health

We shouldn’t need a single month to raise awareness for mental health and illness, but we have May. The first week of May focuses on the mental health of children, with May 7th being the official “Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day.” The mental health of children has always been important to me. I worked twelve […]

Living with Schizoaffective Depressive Disorder – Jeremiah’s story

September of 2019 was the start of the overwhelming audio and visual delusions. I had experienced manic episodes and psychotic reactions to things in my life due to trauma and the environment I was raised in from an early age. However my parents never tried to get me medical attention and my illness gradually worsened […]

World Mental Health Day 2020

One in five people will be diagnosed with a mental illness but it is how you choose to live with your diagnoses that will set you apart from the rest. I struggled since childhood and was not diagnosed with anxiety and depression until age twenty-three. It was seven years later that I was officially diagnosed […]

Living with Schizophrenia- Celia’s story

Hey, I’m Celia and I live with schizoaffective disorder depressive type. Schizophrenia runs in my family. Everything peaked for me when I was 27 years old. I spent 8 or so months acutely psychotic. The first 6 months were spent without any psychiatric help. I was over 1,000 miles away from everyone I knew. I […]

Learning to live again – Steve’s story

Approximately 800,000 people die world wide from suicide every year, but what you don’t hear about are the number of people who survive their attempts. Today on World Suicide Prevention Awareness Day, you’ll read about one man’s attempt and the mission he’s on today to stop additional deaths. One day in September of 1987, Steve […]

Living with trauma and mental illness – May’s story

Living with mental illness is hard. I’m not talking “it’s been a bad day” hard I’m talking hide under the bed and pray the monsters can’t find you hard. There is a certain darkness that can’t be escaped when your brain is the part of your body that illness is attacking. The stigma is inescapable, […]