The World Health Organization (WHO) has made October 10th World Mental Health Day to put mental health care and awareness in the lime-LIGHT. Why should you care about today?? Well there is a good, a very good chance, that you or someone you love has experienced a diagnosable “mental illness”.  The lack of quality care for people living with mental disorders is the focus. How to change it and bring not only awareness to theses issues surrounding mental health.

The goal of this blog party here on Psych Central is to bring together mental health advocates and bloggers from around the world to talk about MENTAL HEALTH.

Last year, I posted for Mental Health Day: Lessons Learned from a Bipolar Dad and I wanted to expand on being a Bipolar Dad and what I’ve learned over this past year.

I started out by calling my Mother to check up on Mum. We are moving and we have not talked in the last few weeks. My Father was born in 1934 (I just found this out via http://www.ancestry.com). He was the “original” Bipolar Dad living with Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression) undiagnosed till about a year before he died in 1996.

Over the last year, I have made many positive changes and I have lost many battles. I’ve gone through a 3 month period of Depression and had 5 months …

“Never be afraid to ask for help.”  This is important in life and  is one of Chato’s Life Quotes To Live By:

Words Of The Wisdomless: Life -
“If you wish you could do it all over again… then, you didn’t learn a thing!”

I find I learn more from my failures then by my successes.  It’s like my own recovery,  each time I fail I am able to avoid that trigger or situation the next time around.  I guess you could say, my recovery is made up on nothing but failures. Here is a few more Life Quotes To Live By.

Words Of The Wisdomless: Candy -
“Fill your candy jars with your failures so when you succeed you can taste how sweet is victory.”

Words Of The Wisdomless: Recovery
“I will concentrate on my own recovery, always moving ahead no matter how many small steps forward it takes! Although, if you want to give me a ride on your back, that’ll work too.”

If I tell you that your value as a person is priceless, but you believe that to be valueless, then what I say becomes worthless words.

So, today, and every day, we need to truly think of how we see ourselves, then tell ourselves “we are worth more then that.” I’ll go first: pond scum. I am more valuable than pond scum… Your turn!

-  Chato B. Stewart