It is well-known that heart disease is society's leading killer. In contrast, it is largely unrecognized that people with bipolar disorder are at particularly high risk of heart disease.

When someone dies unexpectedly from something like sudden cardiac arrest as appears to be the case with Carrie Fisher, it is a tragedy. And it is more of a tragedy when the person is young like Ms Fisher was at age 60. But what is an unconscionable travesty, are the blogs being written about her by the anti-psychiatry people who are using her death to promote their beliefs.

We need each other. We need these connections to survive and we need to talk about mental illness to share light and hope. We need to stop stigmatizing mental illness. We need to survive mental illness. You need to survive it. You have to keep moving. Keep fighting. Keep dreaming.

Almost ten years ago, at age 19, I landed myself in the local emergency room after swallowing an entire bottle of antidepressants. It wasn't an easy road to get there, and it hasn't been an easy road since.

I've never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder but I did have anxiety and depression growing up. And who knows? Maybe I am bipolar too and should have been flagged. Maybe if there were more psychiatrists around to help us make a diagnosis, I would have known sooner and taken preventative steps and not have my postpartum episodes be such a surprise to me and my doctor.

I've been waiting a long time for a book like"How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psychiatrist." Written by psychiatrists David Goldbloom and Pier Bryden, this book is the most thorough account I have seen of the thinking process, or what should be the thinking process, of contemporary psychiatrists. And it can change the entire way you go about asking for, and receiving, help from a mental health professional.