Alt-Weekly Scribe's Work on Mental Illness is Part of Growing Trend
By AAN Staff
may 13, 2008 10:16 am
The
New York Times this weekend explored the movement of "mad pride," which entails people publicly speaking frankly about their experiences with mental illness. The
Times noted that
Philadelphia Weekly senior contributing editor Liz Spikol, who chronicles her struggles with bipolar disorder for the paper in her column and
on her blog, is a leading and prominent voice in this area.
Spikol says she's "so excited" to be in the article -- and so is her mom. "Imagine my mom seeing the link on Mother's Day, and keep in mind, we are a Jewish family," she writes. "We ran to WaWa to get a copy of the paper because, for some reason, I wouldn't believe it was 'real' until I saw the print edition." The
Times also traces the origins of the prominent online forum and support network The Icarus Project to the alt-weekly world -- it began six years ago when "one of its founders ...
wrote about his bipolar disorder in the
San Francisco Bay Guardian."