More than 50% of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental disorder or mental illness at some point in their life. According to the CDC, “1 in 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year. 1 in 5 children, either currently or at some point during their life, have had a seriously debilitating mental illness. 1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.“

This is my story. Mental illness. It’s not “PC.” It’s brutal. It’s honest. It’s real. It’s happy. It’s sad. It’s about family, life, loss, finding one’s self, losing one’s self, and trying to make a life in the midst of an internal hell that nobody around me can possibly fathom.

Born in 1984 in Houma, LA, I grew up in mid-Missouri & currently live with my husband and our five children across the state line in Kansas. It was my dream as a young child to be a teacher. As a teenager, that dream morphed into being the best kick-ass, honest attorney that the world had ever seen. Eventually, as I worked in the real world, I realized I could make a huge impact in the lives of others via human resources – managing that balance between company needs & expectations and making sure the people working their tails off for that company were treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. Over the course of 9 nearly-consecutive years (2002-2003 & 2006-2014) I obtained my certificate in human resource management, a bachelor’s in business management, and two MBAs (global/international management & human resource management) while working 70-80+ hour weeks, getting married twice & divorced once, having children, etc.

I was diagnosed with depression at a young age. As an adult, and after going through countless doctors, specialists, and therapists, “depression” was eventually thrown out the window as more and more physical and mental problems because increasingly evident. By the time I turned 36 years old, I’d received confirmed diagnoses of Bipolar Depression, Bipolar II disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), severe generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and panic disorder (panic attacks), chronic abdominal pain, severe migraines, hyperhidrosis, arthritis, hypertension, bilateral knee pain, terminal insomnia, bilateral foot drop, vitamin D and B12 deficiencies, multiple thyroid nodules, morbid obesity, and finally, in early 2020, was diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. There have been times in my life where living no longer seemed like a viable or reasonable option.

My name is Andréa Battista. This is my story.