HAKEEM Rahim is fighting for a cause.

Now a mental health speaker, advocate and educator, Rahim has lived with bipolar disorder for 15 years and now uses his experience to provide perspective and lobby for engagement on mental health issues.

An American, Rahim, who is in Jamaica at the invitation of the US Embassy for a series of speaking engagements on mental illness, being staged in partnership with the Jamaica Mental Health Advocacy Network in celebration of Mental Health Awareness Week, told reporters and editors at yesterday’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange of his journey with the disease, which began in his freshman year at Harvard University in 1998 and how it has propelled him to complete his studies before moving on to Colombia University where he graduated with dual masters.

“While doing my degree in psychology at Harvard I experienced my first terrifying panic attack. When I was diagnosed, I didn’t know what mental illness was and the first time I had a manic episode they (my parents) sent me to Grenada. They thought I was stressed out having a rough year at school. They didn’t realise the illness,” he said.

“The second episode I was hospitalised. I had hallucinations and was seeing Jesus on the corner and I was hearing cars talking and getting instructions from the television. My parents picked me up that same night and took me to a psychiatric hospital the following day. I was hospitalised for two weeks. During hospitalisation, I accepted my illness and began my arduous road to recovery,” Rahim said.

He has, since 2012, been speaking openly about bipolar disorder and has embraced mental health, advocacy and education as part of his vocation.

“I have spoken to over 30,000 students in about 15 different states. If I can help make somebody else’s path easier, it’s good enough for me. The more you can connect on a personal phase with someone and say you can be diagnosed, hospitalised, take medication and still go to graduate school and come back and help your community, it helps. When you tell them you can be a doctor, lawyer, family person, parent and still be a mental health patient, then it’s about service. How can I pull from this and come back and make someone’s path a bit easier? This is walking in purpose for me,” he shared.

Rahim, in 2014, testified on Capitol Hill in front of the Energy and Commerce Congressional Committee where he shared his experience of living with bipolar disorder and had the opportunity to table two bills ­­­— The Helping Family in Mental Health Crisis Act and the Mental Health Improvement Act.

“With this particular bill I shared my journey — one that begins to connect the person who’s walking down the street, and with the person who has recovered to show that recovery is possible. The first one was in the House and the second one is in the Senate. The bill in the Senate would be looking at improving funding in research. We can’t give someone a physical examination and say OK that person will have schizophrenia. With heart attack we can give them a physical examination but because there’s not enough research around mental illness that [and the] bill is looking to increase funding,” he said, adding that it is also looking to increase awareness and providers as the number of people who experience mental illnesses in America far outweighs the number of psychologists and psychiatrists available.

Chairperson of the Jamaica Mental Health Advocacy Network Jhanille Brooks said it is important that Jamaicans begin to have the discussion around mental illnesses in order to reduce the stigma plaguing society.

“It is very important to get the message out there that we can normalise the issue of mental health and reduce the stigma so that more people will be willing to come forward and get the help they need. Many people experience mental health challenges but because of the stigma they are embarrassed to come forward and ask for help,” she said.

But in order to begin the conversation, Brooks said people must be willing to talk and understand that anyone can be affected by mental illness.

“I don’t think everyone is ready to have that discussion because it’s still us ‘normal’ people and ‘them’. It is still us thinking people on the streets are the only people who are mentally ill. Mental illness is different from having a mental health challenge. There’s a spectrum and you can have extreme mental illness on one end, but any one of us can drift along that spectrum according to circumstances. It is now for us to know we are susceptible as ‘normal’ people then we can begin to have that open discussion. We need to be willing to have that discussion to know that it’s not us and them so we can reduce the stigma. When the stigma is reduced, we will open up the door for other things,” she said.