Johnathan Stanley

Jonathan Stanley, J.D., is the Acting Executive Director of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), which is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental disorders. After the onset of bipolar disorder, he graduated from law school, was a practicing attorney, and then joined the TAC in 1998. One of his colleagues (Mary Zdanowicz) said, "...Jonathan's work has made an indelible impression on the landscape of treatment law reform across the nation". He received the Anchor Achievement Award for Leadership and Excellence in Mental Health Advocacy in 2005. You can find more information about the TAC at http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/.

RC: You have quite an amazing story. When did you first become ill?

JS: I got ill in college with bipolar and then we found out I had psychotic features. I think I was about as sick as sick can get. Just briefly at the apex, I went 72 hours in the streets of New York. No sleep, no money, no food. I was running from secret agents from the National Intelligence Agency that were trying to capture me for my secret powers. And I had energy bursts. I [thought that I] had mental telepathy.

RC: I ended up with Satan and his demons. I've heard that studies indicate that the content of a mentally ill person's delusions can be a function of the times in which they live. For example, in the ‘50s, delusions often involved space travelers.

JS: I absolutely believe that because we look at a lot of the media that comes up, particularly with tragedies nationwide. One of the things that I found fascinating was after 9/11, all of a sudden these delusional frameworks featured terrorist plots. Al Qaeda started to pop up left and right and there were a lot of people who were totally psychotic trying to storm caverns because Al Qaeda agents were in there. My personal theory - you won't find this in any text book - but I believe that for most people, particularly if they have a paranoid ideation, it has to be something all powerful. It has to be something that can control your circumstances, something that could explain why you're sick. When you see something that normally shouldn't happen, it can then be explained in terms of an all powerful plot. And so we see God, we see demons, we see Al Qaeda and terrorist plots, we see secret agents. I have read that in some psychiatric hospital in the Middle East, [patients think they see] the CIA.

RC: I don't think people necessarily become illogical during these periods of active psychosis, but rather that their belief system is affected. Take someone that doesn't have a mental illness. If they really believe that the CIA is after them, they would look through the blinds before they went outside and frequently check the rear view mirror in their car.

JS: I could not agree more from a personal experience... For someone who is bipolar with psychotic features, my world was one big cube of panic. I mean that metaphorically. In real life, I had such delusions going on. But even thinking back and analyzing them, I don't think that I made any decisions or made any moves that I would not have made in my rational state of mind. So, I think I was analyzing what was presented to me by my illness as I normally would. But obviously, when you think every other person in Manhattan is a secret agent there to capture you for your superhero powers, you're not acting in the way you normally would.