Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

Managing Bipolar Disorder: Steve Wilson’s Path to Recovery and Support

• Travis White | Mental Health Advocate • Episode 35

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In this episode of Overcome: A Mental Health Podcast, Travis White sits down with Steve Wilson to discuss his lifelong journey of managing bipolar disorder. Diagnosed in the 1970s after years of misdiagnosis, Steve shares how trauma, depression, and hypomania shaped his mental health journey. Through treatment, trauma therapy, and decades of perseverance, he has learned valuable lessons about resilience and support.

Today, Steve not only continues managing bipolar disorder, but also facilitates support groups and advocates for mental health awareness. His story is one of pain, persistence, and ultimately hope—reminding us that recovery is possible and support makes all the difference.

What We Discuss

  • Steve Wilson’s early life and the impact of childhood trauma
  • The challenges of misdiagnosis and finally being diagnosed with bipolar disorder
  • What it means to live with bipolar II disorder and hypomania
  • How trauma therapy helped him stop blaming himself and start healing
  • The high cost of therapy and the challenges within the mental health system
  • His work facilitating mental health support groups and helping others manage bipolar disorder
  • Insights from his book Teetering on a Tightrope: My Bipolar Journey
  • What family members can do to better support loved ones living with mental illness
  • Breaking stigma and spreading awareness about bipolar disorder

Learn More About Steve

  • Visit Steve Wilson’s website and support groups: movingforward.group
  • Read Steve’s book Teetering on a Tightrope: My Bipolar Journey on Amazon

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Travis White (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Overcome, a mental health podcast. am your host, Travis White. So it's a place for you to share your mental health stories. I'm very excited for today's guest. I'm speaking with Steve Wilson. Steve is with us to open a discussion about bipolar disorder. Steve was diagnosed in 1976 after years of being misdiagnosed. Steve, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Steve Wilson (00:26)
Thank you very much.

Travis White (00:29)
And I am just gonna turn the time right over to Steve and have him dive into his story.

Steve Wilson (00:29)
you

Fine. Okay. We'll begin with my childhood, early day, early years. I was a normal kid, played baseball, basketball, had good grades, ran around a lot of friends. Up until I was nine, I'm now 76, by the way, when I was nine, I was sexually assaulted.

in a restroom at a movie theater.

had no idea what had just happened. Couldn't figure out why I was chosen and figured it must be because I attracted the guy. So I blamed myself. And I decided not to tell anyone ever. And I didn't for 30 years.

After the assault, I immediately, well, let's see, a little bit later, couple of, about a year later, I fell into a deep depression. I was a top student, a good athlete, had a lot of friends, but the depression tumbled me into a dark world.

couldn't study, I couldn't do anything at that time. I'm not even sure there was TV to watch. So I just kind of existed. But that was on the inside. To everybody else, I was a happy-go-lucky, comedic kid. I had a lot of friends.

Nobody had an idea of what was going on. That continued basically through college.

And then when I got out of college, I got worse. I didn't know where my life was going. know, college is a great fun time for most people. So when I got out of college, I didn't know what to do. I had no plans, so it got worse. And then I started having suicidal ideations. At that time, my father...

for some reason wasn't nice to me. He never hit me or anything. But one night at a barbecue, he pushed me away from the grill and said, you don't know how to grill hamburgers. Well, there was a knife on the grill and I was so mad, I picked it up and I went towards him.

I was gonna stab him.

But all of a sudden, a light came on and I realized what I was doing and I took myself right away to a mental hospital 15 minutes away.

I stayed in the hospital for three weeks. After that stay, I didn't have any more suicidal ideations, but I still was far from good. That was 1972, and they diagnosed me with clinical depression. Now, those days, they had just a few medications.

And because I was diagnosed, they depressive, which was wrong. None of them helped. That was 72 in 76. My psychiatrist walked in on our session and say, said he made a mistake. And I was bipolar. I had no idea what the hell bipolar was. And he really didn't explain it. He just said, got my

Travis White (04:26)
you

Steve Wilson (04:37)
Polar, we're gonna try lithium. And right away, the lithium started to work. And it got me better so I could function and did for 20 years. But it was far from getting me past the bipolar. And no one ever gets past bipolar.

or most of these mental illnesses, there are no cures. I know there's no cure for bipolar. So that went on for many years with the lithium. I had almost no support. Now, mainly they knew I was...

Having problems with my parents, my brother and sister, but they didn't know how bad it was. And my dad didn't give a damn how I was. My brother and sister weren't around. And my mother is the only one who showed a little compassion. But actually that's not what I needed. I just needed good old support. Didn't get any.

And my father continued to, you know, not support me at all and be mean to me. But again, I said he never hit me. So my wife and I, who got married in 72, up and left, and we drove blindly to the West Coast. I'm from Ohio.

And we struck out, we didn't have a clue where we were going. We ended up in Phoenix. We loved it as soon as we saw it. Now I wanted to be a golf pro. Now not a playing golf pro, at a course.

So I got a job at a beautiful country club.

But I failed because I couldn't keep a job. I'd quit my dad's store after a year. I just couldn't get over the depression, the boring stuff. And so I left in six months, came back to Ohio, went back to work for my dad because I was just lost. And that lasted a year.

quit that job and then in 1978, that was 77 and in 1978 I got lithium and that stabilized me but I was far from being okay.

one of my huge problems has always been impulsivity. I would jump at anything that came up. usually made the wrong choice. We had a clothing store in our family for 80 years. I ruined it. I was a million dollar company and I sank it because.

just dumb things I did. Now, all of that stuff is because my mind was out of control. They're called ruminations and it just makes things swirl around in your mind. You were worried all the time and it was horrible.

Now we bring it to my psychiatrist died. I want to tell you something. In about 1985, I was ready to tell my psychiatrist that I had been assaulted. So I told him at one of our sessions, he looked at me and said, well, what else is going on? And never spoke about it.

That knocked me down badly. So I didn't even tell my wife that was 85 until 2015. So I kept all that inside me even longer.

Today.

I've been through therapy and I've been through trauma therapy. And the best thing I ever did was go to trauma therapy. And that was five or six years ago, we'll say 19 or 2020, which is approximately 50 years.

when I was diagnosed with bipolar. So for 50 years, I was stumbling along on my own, depressed.

And for some reason, my wife stayed with me. We had a lot of good times. It's not all bad. My polar is an up and down thing. You feel great for a while, maybe a month or two, but eventually you crash, go down into a hole. And for the next period of time, that's where you are. In the year 2000.

I got a new psychiatrist and he, when I told him about the ideations, he prescribed Paxil and it's almost totally stopped the ruminations. So I was really much better then. And today I'm in pretty damn good shape. I'm still very impulsive, make a lot of mistakes in thinking still.

but 80 % better.

Travis White (10:21)
That's really good news. It's really great to hear. And I apologize that you have to go through all that. I've been sitting here and just thinking like, ugh, I don't wish that type of stuff up on anybody. But thinking back to your sexual assault, how do you think that experience shaped your mental health journey?

Steve Wilson (10:23)
Thank you.

Right.

it turned it around completely. I wasn't diagnosed, I said, first time until 1972. Now you gotta realize the stigma at that time was even far worse than it is today. And I don't think there was much help.

for kids. I have no idea, but nobody suggested it. So it was...

bleak as hell. And when I got raped, I was scared to hell and didn't know what hit me. that incident, remember I was great till that day, that incident threw me into depression. And that depression was really bipolar. And that's what's changed my life.

Travis White (11:46)
And knowing now what you know about bipolar, can you actually kind of, I know this may be a little bit hard to do, but can you actually look back on your life, like before you were diagnosed and like point out like, this was me having a manic episode.

Steve Wilson (12:06)
I'm sorry I missed that.

Travis White (12:08)
So, knowing now what you know about bipolar, if you think back on your life before you were diagnosed with it, can you actually point out, this was a manic episode at that time? No? you've never had media, okay.

Steve Wilson (12:21)
No, I've never had mania. What's going on

bipolar two? Now the difference between one and two essentially is bipolar one is you go from depression to a high, high mania state. You give things away, you cheat, you do whatever, you ruin your family, you throw away all your money, you gamble.

Travis White (12:28)
Okay.

Steve Wilson (12:50)
and a lot of people look back when they're better and their whole life is destroyed. What I have is bipolar two, which is deep depression. And the mania that I go into is called hypomania. And it's about halfway between depression and mania. So my mania...

is what makes me impulsive and make bad decisions, but it is not even close to when you have a manic episode.

Travis White (13:25)
us.

Okay, that's good to know. I think I've basically only talked to the type one then. So this is a new learning experience for me. So thank you for that.

Steve Wilson (13:36)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (13:40)
That's, I just said that's a good learning experience for me because I've only talked to people with type one.

Steve Wilson (13:41)
Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, most people don't have a clue. All they think of mania means you're out of control. But they never consider that there's another type of mania.

Travis White (14:00)
Yeah.

So what does

with the medication and therapy you've been through, what does your bipolar disorder look like today? How do you keep it managed? What therapy techniques do you use to keep going moving forward?

Steve Wilson (14:22)
Well, I want to tell you, I stopped.

therapy right after my psychiatrist died. He died in about 85 or something like that, maybe even before that. I didn't have any therapy from then, maybe a couple of times during that period. I didn't realize that I was good enough on the lithium at that time that I didn't realize

how bad I really was. I'd gotten to that state where I kind of ignored it. that's when, you know, later the new psychiatrists got me on a new medication. That helped a lot. But what really helped was trauma therapy that I took. I started about five years ago. Her method, the therapist,

was to have me look all through my past life and taking me back to the beginning of life and everything up until 2000, 2020. She said, look at all the things that have occurred to you and

you assumed that they were all your fault. And take a look at whether they were really your fault and was something or someone else to blame. And we went through my whole life and yeah, there were some things it was my fault I screwed up. But I'm going to tell you the majority of them weren't my fault. But I've been blaming myself all those years, 50 years, and it was

quite an eye-opener. And as I said, that was five years ago, and it's made the biggest difference in my life of anything else.

Travis White (16:33)
Yeah, I can only imagine. I think that's a hard part about having a mental illness. I myself struggle with anxiety and depression. And I've had to, this last year I've went to pretty intense therapy and I've had to learn to stop blaming myself and to actually learn to love myself. So I can relate to that quite a bit.

Steve Wilson (16:43)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It's true, it works.

Travis White (17:00)
Yeah, for sure. Can you describe the contrast between like your really kind of highs compared to your darkest modes of bipolarism?

Steve Wilson (17:13)
The highs

I experienced as far as just the impulsivity and stupid mistakes, not even close to troubling as much as a depression. When I was down in that dark hole of depression where I felt it wasn't worth living and I was worthless, nobody loved me, and so on and so forth.

That was the scariest time of my life after actually being raped. So there's no comparison from hypomania to depression. Now, when you actually have mania, you suffer both. You suffer the mania and the deep depression.

Travis White (18:07)
Yeah, I can attest to that as well with the depression. It doesn't take long for it to overtake your life and just pretty much screw up almost every aspect of it.

Steve Wilson (18:20)
I can testify to that.

Travis White (18:24)
And when you were, want to go back to your kind of suicide ideation. So I've had been there as well. And in my darkest moments, I actually had a plan for how I wanted to go. I wanted to die all the time. I didn't want to wake up.

How far did yours get? Did it get to that point where you just thinking about it or did you actually in your mind like know exactly what would happen if you were to do anything?

Steve Wilson (19:04)
No, I never thought of killing myself or anything else. The worst was feeling so worthless that nobody loved me, but never thought of killing myself.

Travis White (19:18)
Yeah, that's good. I don't wish getting to that point upon anybody.

I've struggled with that kind of stuff multiple times.

Steve Wilson (19:30)
That's tough. I now since 2015, am the facilitator of three mental health support groups. And I do them three times a week or two hours long. We're now doing them since COVID on Zoom. And...

I have seen well over a thousand people and...

They're lost. They have nowhere to go. Traditional therapy medication doesn't help. now most of my group don't get help from them. Maybe a bit. Now the people I...

have in my groups are mostly average to low income. And many of them are on disability. Disability you can, and they're not able to work. So the great plan that the government made years ago was very good. They'd help out these people.

with they allowed them to, I don't know, allowed them now to make $20,000 a year. That's it. And they offer them psychiatric help, free medication.

but these.

I don't know what you'd call them, therapy places. They're so overwhelmed that they may be a help in lot of cases, but in many other cases, they drop the ball. But the worst thing is when they set up disability, and I don't know what the number was when they set it up, but is not nearly enough today.

to sustain their lives. I had in my group one person who was on disability and she became better and better mentally and was able to get a part-time job. It just put her to making about

$25,000.

So what did the government do? Took her disability away.

And so she went from making 20 to 25. But if they would have kept the disability, which was very low, she would have made a decent wage. But what did they do? Kept her down to where problems with feeding the family, doing most anything. The government hasn't changed their way.

or anything else for many, years. And today they have no plans of helping the mentally ill almost at all. they set up these commissions or whatever, but they never go anywhere. The insurance companies, when I was getting life insurance,

60 years ago or whatever it was, at the top of the insurance policy, it said, does not cover mental illness. So that's a small snapshot of the way the industry with the insurance companies, the government, and also...

the ⁓ big pharma because they refuse to pay to many of the insurance companies. They've lowered how much they give to the psychiatrists and therapists to where they have to raise their prices. So automatically, this has become a country.

that if you want decent therapy and help, you've to make $75,000 or $100,000 minimum. So people come to my groups and there's a lot of groups around the country. And for many of them, it's the only help they get. And we can only do so much. We can't prescribe or anything else. We can't even tell them what to do.

So it's a horrible system in this country, far worse than if you have a medical problem.

Travis White (24:24)
Yeah, I believe it and I can tell the audience that therapy is expensive. For sure.

Steve Wilson (24:31)
My

trauma therapy was $200 a session.

Travis White (24:36)
Yeah, it's crazy the amount of money it costs just for an hour session. I pay close to 150 and that's a regular therapist just to go talk.

Steve Wilson (24:51)
That's right. Most of the therapists here are 110 and up. Now, if you're making $20,000 a year, if you have 10 sessions, that's $1,000. And you keep going because you know that therapy takes a long, long time. And what are they going to do?

Travis White (25:09)
Mm-hmm.

So you mentioned that you basically facilitate support groups. What have you learned from others who are also living with bipolar disorder?

Steve Wilson (25:27)
Yes.

Well, I'll tell you, I've learned that all of our lives have been similar in different ways, It's really opened my mind even further than it was before to what actually goes on with millions of people. There are 70 million people in the United States alone.

who suffer from mental illness. 70 million, that's 20%. Now, does anybody ever talk about that? No. They make it sound like, there's just a few of us and we're crazy. That's not the case. And by the way, this is worldwide. That figure is 20%.

Now, I guess what I've learned the most is that all of us who are still plowing along and making little progress every once in a while are superheroes. People who don't have our affliction don't have a clue what we go through and don't know what it...

takes to keep going. Now, I wrote a book.

in 2022. It's called Teetering on a Tightrope, My Bipolar Journey. It's all about my life that I went through with bipolar from beginning to end, well, which it is now. And I originally sold it in 2023 and 2024.

on Amazon. And what I've done now is I've added to it, put a new cover on it and things, and it can be now purchased on Amazon. Same title, different cover, some new things. So that's happening. When I wrote the first edition,

I've got over 50 reviews, 90 % of them thanked me and said, you need to do more of this. So it's a great book. And not only for the mentally ill, but their families and anybody else who needs to know what's going on.

Travis White (28:23)
And that's important to note right there because to me that just shows that you're helping people out, which I always like to hear on this podcast. I love it.

Steve Wilson (28:32)
Yeah, I'm really

deep into this.

Travis White (28:37)
Well, you're not only doing it with your book, but you're doing it with the support groups as well.

Steve Wilson (28:42)
Yeah, I agree.

And I have done about 50 podcasts and I continue to do more. Only reason is to get the awareness out there.

Travis White (28:57)
I'm in the same space. That's one of the main reasons I do this is to get the awareness out there. So, how did writing your book help you process your own experience?

Steve Wilson (29:07)
It was a pretty easy process because it was my own life. And what I did is I started out and wrote what I thought I was going to talk about chapter by chapter. I knew everything. It's not researching or anything. It was all in my head. It took about a year to write it because I only worked on it about two hours a day. So I could have written it in six months.

Travis White (29:24)
Yeah.

Steve Wilson (29:39)
But I'm a very good writer, so it was easy to read. And it just became, I didn't look at it as I wrote things down and go, oh, damn, I went through that. I wrote it just because it felt good.

Travis White (29:59)
Was it hard to relive any of those experiences as you were writing?

Steve Wilson (30:04)
No.

Travis White (30:09)
So what advice would you give family members or someone who is struggling with bipolar?

Steve Wilson (30:15)
Well, for the family members, I would say support and love and being with them is the best thing they can do. Do not do what most, by far most family members do and say, go take a walk. You'll be better than them.

or go to a movie that I'm cheering you up. None of that stuff works. It works and makes you worse. So the family members should help you find a psychiatrist and help and realize there are things out there like EMDR and behavioral therapy. Very few people know about it.

So no parent can help you with that. They never heard of it. So you've got to just love them, be there for them, and get them help.

Travis White (31:26)
Yeah, it's, yeah, and I wanna just say that I hate the phrases that you mentioned. Like, go to a movie, you'll get over it. Anything dealing with that, like I'm totally against, because I can't count the times where somebody's told me like, it's just a phase, you'll get over it. Just keep pushing through. I'm like, no, there's something wrong with me.

Steve Wilson (31:50)
Yeah. And you know what? One of the worst things with me is I wouldn't tell them to stop. I would just get even more depressed. I wouldn't say anything to them. And that was the pattern my whole life. I never confronted anybody about the things they were doing that were bad and all that. Not until I had the

Trauma therapy, 50 years later.

Travis White (32:23)
Yeah, that's... And then by bottling it up, it just basically makes it worse. But then, like I had a few moments in my life where, you know, somebody wouldn't listen as I was telling them stuff about myself or they just kind of shoved aside. So it just make me shut down even more.

Steve Wilson (32:28)
Yeah. For sure.

Yeah. And if you try to explain them to them, what you've gone through, like a good friend or your mother or father, they can't even imagine what you're talking about. They have no idea. When a person breaks his arm, you know exactly what he's feeling. But in mental illness, nobody can understand it. They just think you can get over it next week.

Travis White (33:10)
Yeah. And unless like I, so my, my wife, well, we've been together for years. ⁓ it took us a while. were engaged for 10 years because of medical problems, my mental health issues. And this is when I was struggling really bad with anxiety and depression. And she would try to do these things as like, that's, that's not helpful. And just recently she's, going through some anxiety issues herself.

Steve Wilson (33:21)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (33:37)
So she's kind of coming to terms on the other side of it saying like, ⁓ I finally understand what you were going through a lot more than I did before.

Steve Wilson (33:37)
you

That's true. And with my groups, they all have gone through that stuff. And the vast majority of them, I told you I've seen over a thousand, the vast majority of them were assaulted when they were young. They were either beaten, verbally abused, or sexually abused.

Travis White (33:59)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Wilson (34:13)
Now that's not true with all of them, there are other factors. But a whole bigger bunch had a traumatic experience. Now that traumatic experience can also be you were in love with your wife for 20 years and then she packs up and leaves. That can lead to a deep depression.

So there many things that go along with it.

Travis White (34:46)
So with working with over a thousand people in your support groups, what gives you hope for those that are still struggling in silence?

Steve Wilson (34:54)
There's always hope. There's no cure as we've said. But if the people who are mentally ill keep pushing forward and realize that it's going to be a long journey and there's going to be a lot of ups and lot of downs, they just got to keep pushing and they'll get better every step of the way.

Travis White (35:17)
love it. And I want go back to your book for just a minute. What is the main thing that you hope readers will take away from Teetering on a Tightrope?

Steve Wilson (35:20)
Mm-hmm.

Well, it's simply that to get the word out of how a person, what happens to a person like me when they go through a mental illness. It's not just craziness. It's not just, he's got the blues.

through my journey and all the bad stuff, people can...

realize what can happen and how bad and dark it can get. On the other side of what I was doing was showing that

Help is there if you can find it. And if you keep pushing forward through this long journey, you'll get better and better. So don't give up.

Travis White (36:23)
Yeah, I can, I love that answer. I think it's important to, especially those like who are still staying silent, remaining silent about their mental illness, like don't give up, like keep pushing forward.

Steve Wilson (36:41)
Yeah, when I was doing my groups in person before COVID, I would have as many as 24 in my groups. Couldn't do anything for them. Occasionally, too damn many people. And when I was doing them in group, I mean, in ⁓ person,

It was the only time someone committed suicide. were two of them and they were so desperate, which I got to get out the word to people who don't have a clue about how get bad at combat. She was so desperate. She, her cat was on insulin. So she got the cat's insulin.

full strength and put it in herself. So that's how desperate people can get. And other people need to be able to tell when somebody's in real trouble. And you can easily tell if they mope around the house all the time, don't eat, don't sleep. That's when you...

yet.

to be firm and get them help. And I swear, my parents didn't do that stuff. They didn't know anything about what you can do or look for. But today, it's quite apparent.

Travis White (38:12)
Yeah, it's, I think nowadays it's more you need to, obviously I wasn't living back then so I can't say anything for back in that time, but nowadays I think it's for like if you're the one like watching somebody go through this and moping around, have the courage to stand up and ask the question.

Steve Wilson (38:35)
Yeah.

Travis White (38:40)
So basically just a few follow-up questions here, like kind of close out questions. And this one, you touch base on this a little bit, but I ask this question on every episode because I like to hear the reactions and it's very kind of a generalized question. But what do you believe is the biggest stigma in mental health today? Yeah.

Steve Wilson (38:46)
Okay.

Stigma. ⁓

Well, it's simply that they think everybody mentally knows crazy and they think they should be locked up. That's what I think.

Travis White (39:19)
Yeah, it's true and that's something that we have to push past and just keep having conversations about it.

Steve Wilson (39:26)
And there's one other thing about those people. They won't change their mind even if they get the facts.

Travis White (39:33)
Yeah, that's there's truth there too.

It's like once their minds made up and it's like, well, this is how I'm going to keep looking at it.

Steve Wilson (39:44)
You

Travis White (39:48)
All right, and the, is there anything that we have not discussed today that you would like to bring up?

Steve Wilson (39:57)
Well, three of the things that I would like to go back to are the government, the insurance companies and Big Pharma. They have got to be changed. They're ruining the lives. Actually, their actions are ruining the lives of many people who are suffering the most because of their standing in life.

⁓ by God, they'll all run to the rich man. They'll save him, try to save him tomorrow.

But what's going on for most people, you're in crisis today. Right now you're in crisis and you call a psychiatrist. Some of them will see you right away.

But the majority of them will say, ⁓ I'm booked up for two months, can't see you. Now, what good is that? But that's what they do. In my day, when I went through some of my episodes, hell, I'd get in that day. But I would say that probably happens 50 % of the time now. And the other times it's can't see you today or this week.

Travis White (41:13)
Yeah.

Steve Wilson (41:13)
And with

the industry for insurance, those greedy bastards could care about anybody, point blank. And the government doesn't even look into mental illness at all. They won't change anything. Disability is

Good.

For some people, but it keeps them down from getting up in their lives to a different level so they can support their families.

Travis White (41:53)
Yeah, all really good stuff. And I want to touch base on what you said about getting into an appointment. It took me. So last year I had a spout where I was very suicidal. I had had some medical issues and they came back. They'd been kind of, I wouldn't say like non-existent for years, but they're like, have seizures and they're just, they just kind of died down the few years ago and

Steve Wilson (42:21)
Yeah.

Travis White (42:21)
But last year came back in a big cluster, so I got really depressed, really dark. So I was trying to get into, um, just to go see a a therapist. And it took me about a month to get in. And then I go in for my first session and they're like, well, we don't have any openings for another month and a half. It was like, okay, well, I guess I'll go with someone else then they can get me in. And it just happened that it.

Steve Wilson (42:42)
Yeah

Travis White (42:49)
former therapist I'd seen and got along with like I Couldn't afford to go back because I've lost a job when I was start seeing you it. I have some openings had some openings and They booked me for like three months straight every week

Steve Wilson (42:57)
Horrible. Horrible.

Well, I'll tell you, there's another problem. People today are not going into therapy or psychiatry like they were before. So there's a real shortage of that profession, which just compounds the problem a lot.

Travis White (43:30)
And do you do you feel I guess one last question since this we're kind of on this subject. Do you do you feel like in today's society that a lot of people are afraid to get the help they need and go to therapy because they're afraid of what's attached to being that person that goes to therapy?

Steve Wilson (43:50)
Well, I'll tell you.

50 % of mentally ill people do not go to try to get any help. And the medications we have.

are good overall only 50 % of the time.

So not only do people not go because they figure it's the way they're going to be for the rest of their life, for many people who rely on medication plus therapy, medication doesn't work.

And on the other hand, there are many, many sufferers who get help. They get medication. If it works, great. Two or three months later, they say, I don't need this anymore. I feel too good. And bam, month or two later, they crash.

Travis White (44:57)
Yeah. And I've heard of stories of taking people like going through maybe five or six different medications before they found something that actually worked for them.

Steve Wilson (45:05)
Yeah.

And that happens in my groups at least, hell, I'd say 75 % of the time. There are very few of my group members who have ever, what was I gonna say? There's very few members of all my groups over the years who have found the proper medication for them.

Travis White (45:39)
That's too bad.

Steve Wilson (45:41)
It's just a fact.

Now, tell you what, some of it's their own doing because they quit or won't take their pills. So it's not just the fault of the medications, it's fault of the way the mentally ill react to taking medication.

Travis White (45:59)
Yeah, yeah,

I can see that. And last thing here, where can people find you? Last thing here, where can people find you? Do you have a website or social media accounts?

Steve Wilson (46:09)
Pardon me?

Yeah,

my support groups are called Moving Forward Mental Health Support Groups. Where you can find my website is movingforward.group. We meet Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

7 to 9 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. And in a few months, that a change will be in something else. Or we stay the same, but everybody else moves. We don't have daylight saving times here.

Travis White (46:59)
That's good to know and I will put that link in the show notes when I the episodes released and I want to just Take a minute and say thank you for coming on Steve. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. I really admire what you're doing and helping people and Giving people letting people know that there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel

Steve Wilson (47:04)
Thank you.

Well, I'm glad to do it. As I said, I do it. I've done it on 50 podcasts and I hope people are listening.

Travis White (47:33)
And to all those that are listening, thank you for joining us on this episode. Please subscribe, follow us, like our stuff, and share it. That's the best thing you can do. It really helps us out. And thanks again for listening. Until next time.