Greetings, Ebony Emotions readers — and happy Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage and Mental Health Awareness Month.

Mental Health Awareness Month was founded in 1949 by Mental Health America. In honor of this important time of reflection and representation, we’re spotlighting voices that don’t often get heard — voices that challenge stigma, celebrate culture, and push for healing. Alongside this piece, don’t forget to download The Letters Bd Are For Bipolar Disorder for FREE.

Today, we’re honored to share the story of John D. Lin, a Taiwanese American public speaking professor, professional speaker, and National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) “In Our Own Voice” presenter. Lin opens up about his journey living with bipolar disorder II, his Buddhist upbringing, and what it means to find balance between cultural pride and personal truth.

1) Can you briefly introduce yourself and share a bit about your background?

John: I am a Taiwanese American, born in New York City. I have lived here my entire life. To get away from the chaos of being here, I’ve traveled to all seven continents and 125 countries. I’m a public speaking professor in the New York City and New Jersey area, and I have three and a half month summers and five week winter breaks. So I have a lot of time to travel. When I was in college, I dropped out when I was 19 years old, because of a mental illness. I had major depressive disorder. It took a long path for me to eventually get back into NAMI, but about 20 years later, here I am.

2) You come from a Buddhist family. What was it like growing up in that environment, and how did it shape your views on life and mental health?

John: For the Buddhist aspect, my poor dear old mother thought it was her fault. She thought that she wasn’t praying enough. To give you an example, I have 42 first cousins, and most of them are very successful. My uncle went to Harvard, and he was a scientist, and he got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for science, and he became the advisor to Taiwan in science. And then you have me right somewhere down the line over there, so with the superstition traditions, plus the Asian household focusing on education. It was just a double whammy that was really hard for my family to stomach.

3) Please share how you first came to understand your bipolar type II diagnosis?

John: When I was 19, I ended up getting diagnosed just with the depression part. It wasn’t until I was about 23 that I got the diagnosis for being type two bipolar. I’ve been on and off my medication 13 times because one of the beliefs is not necessarily that you can pray it away, but you don’t need foreign medicine. You can take herbs, and herbs will be good enough. Or you can do acupuncture, and that would be enough. Whenever I got better, I tried to get off the medicine. After I relapsed, I had to go back and take my medication. Sometimes when you feel depressed, you’re like, ‘Oh, I kind of feel depressed today.’ That was the first time I really had no explanation for why I felt a certain way. And that’s when I went back to the doctor and he said, ‘I think you’re bipolar.’

4) Many people in the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) community experience misdiagnosis with bipolar disorder. Did that delay your treatment or affect your recovery?

John: It’s very possible that the type two bipolar might have manifested itself later on, genetically, or it came about afterwards. It was extremely scary. Even my parents were like, ‘I can understand that you’re depressed, but how can there be an illness for someone feeling too happy?’ I would say that for my situation, it delayed my treatment, because I probably should have been seeing a psychiatrist if I could do it all over again.

5) How have media portrayals and stereotypes around mental health affected people like you in the BIPOC bipolar community?

John: To say that you’re depressed is something that society can understand a little bit more. But when you say you’re bipolar, that’s when you start hearing about the media like you’re “crazy.” And so when I heard that I was bipolar, that freaked me out, because I realized, ‘wow, like, this is something larger.’  But because of the stigma and it being the first time, I had six months where I ended up sleeping 21 hours a day, and I didn’t think that I was going to make it to my 20th birthday because of how bad it was. For the portrayal of everything, I don’t think there were many portrayals of Asian Americans that had mental illness at the time, regardless of race, what was portrayed of mental illness, it was never favorable.

6) Do you feel more support from family and friends now, or is it still challenging to have those conversations?

John: With the support, it’s come from being able to have a better track record with everything. The information out there for how to handle depression or mental illness is you have to sleep eight hours a day, you have to eat your vegetables, you have to have your fruits, you have to exercise. But the problem is, when you’re depressed, you do not want to do any of that, and doing that is, at least to me, makes my depression and everything worse. So that means, if I want caramel popcorn, I’m having it. If I want to sleep at 5 a.m., I sleep at 5 a.m. My parents knew this was just John’s way of going through his recovery. And that’s one of the aspects that has helped for my recovery, having that support system, by letting them know, give me my space, I know how to get through this.

7) What’s one thing you wish the AAPI community better understood about bipolar disorder and mental health?

John: You don’t have to have a particular cause and effect, because for Asians, and this is for so many cultures, right? But for Asians, there’s always a phrase in Taiwanese that’s bo bin zu. So if you do something that’s bad, you bo bin zu, you don’t have a face, and that’s like your reputation on the line. And so when the situation happened where I was dropped out of school, it’s like my family has no face. There doesn’t have to be a situation for that. You don’t need to try to save face by having an explanation as to why you might feel down or why you might have a mental illness, and if we were able to cut through that, we could communicate in a way that is much more clear and genuine.

8) How has public speaking shaped your understanding of mental health and your personal story?

John: Public speaking, I would say, saved my life. Words mean so much to me because I was able to have the best relationship with my grandmother because I spoke Taiwanese, that was my first language. That is, to me, the most important and blessed skill that I have. With depression and with bipolar, you feel so many emotions, and you could just be so lost with how you feel, but if you can find the words, at least to a better degree, you have a better shot at being able to explain that and have people understand you. So I feel like it’s also my responsibility to use my position to let it be put out there that I do have this mental illness, and other people have it as well, and not be silent about it.

9) What message would you give to others in the AAPI community who may be struggling in silence? What are your hopes for the future of mental health awareness?

John: One aspect for sure is that the community is changing. I wish my grandmother was still alive today, but she passed away at the age of 94 in the year 2005. Here in America, we are tracking those statistics. I mean, there’s so many countries that I’ve been to where you’re just a complete outcast, and you’re almost subhuman if you have any symptoms or signs of depression. Hopefully, in the near future, we could talk about mental illness, just as we talk about diabetes or cancer, where it’s not an Asian thing or a Black thing or any type of race thing, it just becomes something that we all know, that people have, and it doesn’t have to be stigmatized in a particular community. That would be one of the great achievements I think we could have as a society, so at the very least, stigma is broken, and communication across all barriers has become more transparent. That would be one of the good goals to have.

Final Thoughts

Stories like Lin’s remind us that treatment doesn’t always follow a straight path — but every time someone speaks up, it opens the door for someone else to do the same. If you’d like to share your own experience or reflections as a BIPOC bipolar person, email us at Ebony Emotions — we’d love to hear your story.