COFFS Harbour region speaker, artist and advocate ‘Bipolar Barbie’ this month released the first volume in a planned six-volume set of books detailing her personal day-to-day journey through mental illness.

Titled ‘Drowning In The Seas Of Mental Illness’, the book also lays out methods and techniques she employed to meet the challenges she encountered along the way.

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The book gives a creative and raw account of living with Type 2 Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder.

The pen-name ‘Barbie’ refers to one moment during her journey where the author realised she had multiple identities that changed clothes, much like the famed children’s doll.

The book illustrates the struggle of living with chronic mental illness and navigating the waters of what she calls “a severely inadequate mental health care system”.

Barbie says she decided to tell her story “to inspire others to never give up reaching out for help”.

“Just talking about the stigma surrounding mental illness is not productive,” she said, adding it was not helpful “to bring attention to the fact that it is normal to shun and stigmatise sufferers of an ‘invisible illness’”.

Barbie said she suddenly and inexplicably found herself lost in her own life while studying law several years ago at university in Sydney – experiencing mental illness for the first time.

‘Drowning’ details the “gruelling process of getting a diagnosis and learning to live with a disease that kills over one million people a year world wide”.

“I believe there needs to be a focus on youth mental health,” she said.

“It’s tricky to weigh up the benefits of conditioning a young mind who is still developing their identity with the idea that something is wrong with them.”

Barbie’s book documents her journey through a series of short stories presented through the emotions and ‘personality’ of “each different Barbie”.

“I had a strong sense of who I was … in my early years or at the very least who everyone in my life told me I was,” she said.

Then suddenly “I knew I had lost that person”.

“I tried to get her back like Liam Neelson’s character from the movie ‘Taken’.

“But that didn’t work.

“After about ten years of peeling back the layers or filters that I see as aspects of my mental illnesses, I was able to find ‘naked Barbie’,” she said.

“It wasn’t a journey about finding who I used to be but discovering who I was.

“I believe everyone fails at who they are ‘supposed to be’; we can only control who we want to become.”

Drowning In The Seas of Mental Illness is available on Amazon and other outlets.

By Paul FOGARTY