CW: OCD and bipolar disorder

Emily chats with Dr. Clare Griffin, who opens up about medical treatments for OCD and bipolar disorder, strongly advocating for her needs and using creative writing as a medium to express experiences of mental illness.

Clare is a science historian who opened up previously, in episode 14, about the delay in her diagnoses and how this impacted her academic journey.

This episode covers:

·  A fantastic book series recommendation, and more animal chat

·  Some of the medical treatments Clare has found for OCD and bipolar, including how she responded to approaches that didn’t feel right to her

·  The problematic issue of agency being withdrawn from someone that is mentally ill

·  Silencing of people with mental illness to make others feel more comfortable

·  Considerations of cost and safety through treatment

·  Saying no, and being clear with others about your needs, even at a senior level of academia

·  Creative writing for expressing mental illness from a different, perhaps less vulnerable, angle

·  Disability resources Clare recommends

·  How self-advocacy has helped to support Clare

Resources:

·  Clare’s website

·  Autistic Hoya - for writing and projects on disability justice: Twitter, website, Lydia X. Z. Brown

·  Ovidia Yu – mystery books author, with diverse characters

·  Clare recommends disability literary journals and websites, where people can creatively express their conditions. One of them is wordgathering, where she has also shared parts of her story

The full transcript of the podcast is available here, with many thanks to Dan Ranson

For mental health support, please contact your GP or use the appropriate support for your country at https://checkpointorg.com/global/

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Recorded 25/06/2021.

Sound: Mindset by Ketsa is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, available through Free Music Archive.