14. Living without Diagnoses | Dr. Clare Griffin

CW: OCD and bipolar disorder

Emily chats with Dr. Clare Griffin, who opens up about the delays in her diagnoses of OCD and bipolar disorder, and how the conditions have impacted her academic journey, both before and after treatment.

This episode covers:

·  Clare’s love of video games, running and animals

·  The common lag time of ~10 years from onset of symptoms to diagnosis of OCD or bipolar disorder

·  How mental illness is often framed based on how it impacts other people

·  The difficulty of knowing whether your mental experiences are similar to those of others

·  How Clare’s academic journey was impacted by her conditions before she received diagnoses

·  The academic culture of overwork

·  Self-advocacy balanced with personal boundaries and health

·  How Clare’s openness about her diagnoses has impacted her academic experience

Resources:

·  Clare’s website

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

·  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.