Personal Perspectives

What Are Personal Perspectives?

The Personal Perspectives essays celebrate the individual voices of writers with diverse life experiences and points of view about a multitude of topics ranging from coping with challenging health conditions to wide-ranging ruminations. They are often thought-provoking stories of adversity, resilience, and self-knowledge told through first-person narratives. While Personal Perspectives can and often do include empirical information and research insights, their purpose is twofold: to bring the unique thoughts, opinions, and emotions of the writer to the wider world, and to validate the larger importance of mental health to people’s daily lives.

It can be challenging to maintain a balanced mind in the face of life’s often-unpredictable mix of joys, sorrows, triumphs, disappointments, and struggles. Discovering a writer with a similar background and perspective to one’s own—or disappearing into completely alien life experiences that still say a great deal about human existence—are to be found by reading these Personal Perspectives essays.

Essential Reads

What If Our Departed Loved Ones Are Just an Inch Away?

Personal Perspective: Through Dia de los Muertos rituals, we keep joyful connections alive, honoring our loved ones as enduring presences still shaping our lives.

Professional Life After Psychosis

A Personal Perspective: Stop judging your path until you see where it may take you.

The Savage God: Notes on the Suicide of a Friend

Personal Perspective: The suicide of a friend shook me to my core and I couldn't wrap my head around it until her husband boiled it down to two words that explained everything.

Psychosis Has Been Described as Temporary Insanity

Personal Perspective: Psychiatry is constructed around a taxonomy of more than 300 discrete diagnoses, delineated by criteria for timing, co-occurrence, and symptom severity.

Inner Critic vs. Fierce Love

Personal Perspective: Tired of pushing yourself to reach your goals? Discover the power of fierce love to achieve your dreams with grit and grace.

The Death of a Couple

A Personal Perspective: When two people unite in love, they form an entity—the couple—with a unique identity of its own. When one member dies, the couple dies with the person.

"Funny, You Don’t Look Bipolar"

A Personal Perspective: People with mental illness usually don’t look different from the rest of society; still, the misguided stigma continues. Here’s one way to combat it.

The Healing Power of "Maybe"

No one doubts that we live in uncertain times but the question of how to manage uncertainty leaves many at a loss.

Detaching With Love Is Easier Said Than Done

Personal Perspective: Tough love just never felt right to me—and yes, I’m well aware that’s the way it’s supposed to feel, but I don’t care.

Finding Life-Changing Support Through Patient Events

Personal Perspective: Ever felt alone in your battle with illness? Access the power of connection through patient events in the journey to recovery.

Having a Strong Opinion Does Not Make Someone Narcissistic

"Narcissism" is not as common a problem as you might think given how often the term is used.

This One Truth Applies to All of Us

Personal Perspective: We use theory of mind to assess what other people think or feel as well as what they think or feel about us.

Wanting What I Have

A Personal Perspective: It's not always easy to want what we have, but when we can get there, everything looks different.

Living Between What Is Gone and What Is Yet to Be

Personal Perspective: The loss of a spouse ended the life I had. Where do I go from here?