Bassey Ikpi

• Ikpi has said she was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder in 2004. She described receiving the diagnosis as both a relief, because it gave a name to experiences she had been unable to control, and frightening because of the stigma she associated with mental illness at the time. [4]
• After the diagnosis, Ikpi initially kept it largely private. She has said she avoided telling people that she was seeing a psychiatrist or attending therapy and would simply say she was sick when mental-health problems interrupted her work. She later began speaking openly about bipolar II disorder through writing, interviews and advocacy. [5]

• Ikpi has described experiencing hypomania, including periods of insomnia and fast-moving thoughts. She has said that during hypomania her mind could move so quickly that her writing became scattered and difficult to control. [9]
• She has also written about severe depressive periods and about feeling detached from herself at times, describing experiences in which she felt as though she were watching events happen from a distance. [7][6]
• She has been hospitalized twice for mental-health treatment and has said that her first hospitalization became a turning point in understanding what she had been experiencing. In later interviews, Ikpi described at least one depressive episode as so severe that, while writing parts of her memoir, she did not expect to survive it. [7][6]

• Ikpi has said that her treatment has included therapy and medication. Several years after her diagnosis, she wrote that after “six years of ups and downs” and two hospitalizations, she had found a combination of medication and determination that was helping her manage her mental health. [8]
• She has also described periods when maintaining treatment required deliberate effort. In later interviews, she said that her advocacy work sometimes helped remind her to take medication, restart it when necessary and contact her doctor during difficult periods. During the severe depressive period in which she began writing the book, Ikpi has said she increased her medication and attended therapy as part of her treatment. [11][6]

• Ikpi has described reaching a period of greater stability after a severe depressive episode in 2016. In a 2019 NPR interview, she said she had been the healthiest she had ever been for about a year and a half, while emphasizing that this followed one of the worst depressive periods of her life. [7]
• She has described monitoring sleep and other early signs, asking herself whether insomnia or hypomania is “sneaking in” and making adjustments when necessary. [4]

• Ikpi founded the Siwe Project and created No Shame Day, initiatives intended to encourage more open discussion of mental health, particularly among people of African descent. [1][10]
• She has described openness about mental illness as a way of countering shame and encouraging people to seek treatment. [1]
• Ikpi has also said that understanding mental illness requires making room for experiences that may be difficult or inconvenient for other people, rather than extending empathy only when symptoms are easy to understand. [6]

“I don’t suffer from anything, I live with a condition.”

— Bassey Ikpi [1]