My Medical Condition - thanks for your kindness

Since my last entry "My Medical Condition" regarding bipolar, to my surprise ...I got quite a few email responses and some comments from personal friends and blogger friends alike. You would be very interested to know that a number of people shared their own struggles with various forms of mental illness with me and all I can say is that I am privileged to be the one that you shared your stories with. Thanks so much! I really appreciate it!

I'm also glad that I felt free to talk about this openly, as well as receiving so much support, encouragement and love from my family and friends (including my personal friends and friends in the blogosphere). I hope a positive reception to me discussing it here has helped wash away any perceived stigma for the condition as well. Another friend of mine in Melbourne who also has bipolar told me that sharing her journey with people has helped her understand and accept whom she is :-)

My lovely blogger friend Kel also told me about the benefits of art therapy (as she has recently completed studies in art therapy and knows that it could be a very helpful tool for my condition). I would really love to give it a go, especially art is something I really enjoy anyway. I learned that painting and art can be a great medicine, and creativity is the opposite of depressive illnesses. I suppose that is probably the reason why I am staying healthy nowadays, as I have been involved in creative arty stuff~~! Would love to learn more about it all.

Kel has also suggested an article in The Age on this site for more information on the benefits of art therapy, which I found useful. And the followings are some of the testimonies of people who have experienced this modality :

KAREN Hall has bipolar disorder — the condition formerly known as manic depression — and no one was more surprised than her when she enrolled in an art therapy course and started painting flowers.
She's interested in computers and architecture, not flowers. She's not a flower person at all. But that's what she painted.
"It's not the sort of thing I expected to paint," she said. "Never in a million years."

Ms Hall, 28, of Coburg, enjoyed the experience so much, and gained from it in ways that traditional therapy hadn't reached, that she bought paints and brushes to use at home.

For fellow course member Christine Myhre the stakes are higher. She said the art therapy course had saved her life. "I have been suicidal," she said, "but this course keeps me going."

Ms Myhre, 55, of Geelong, suffers from acute depression, but she finds it is softened and sometimes even cured by turning up once a week to Prahran's Victoria Clinic, where the course is held.

Organisers believe the Creative Solutions day program is the only hospital-based art therapy course of its kind in Australia.