As a state representative, Garnet Coleman has spent the past 14 years making decisions that affect 22 million Texans. However, for 14 years before being elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1991, and for three years thereafter, Coleman was living with undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder causes dramatic mood swings, from feeling overly “high” to feeling sad and hopeless, in alternating cycles. “When I wasn’t depressed, I was too productive,” Coleman says. “But when I was in a down cycle, I couldn’t get out of bed for a week at a time. I’d lie there with the covers over my head.”

Coleman first noticed the symptoms of what he now knows is bipolar disorder when he was 17. Sometimes he was depressed; other times he was acting out. “It really interfered with my ability to finish college,” he remembers. It took 11 years for Coleman to earn a degree because he would respond to down cycles by withdrawing from his classes.

“I led an intermittent life until I was 34,” said Coleman, the son of a doctor. “When you come from a family with high performance standards, the highs are OK. But high or low, the last thing you do is seek out therapy. It wasn’t until about 1990 when I asked the rector of my church to help me find help.”

	“Anyone living in a society where mental illness isn’t accepted will try to hide it. But it doesn’t work. You get treatment, or you may end up dead.”

The journey toward recovery that began with that request was still long and arduous. Even after his election to the Texas House, Coleman continued to go through his painful cycles. “I’d leave my house and go to a hotel for a month at a time,” he recalls. The down cycle was particularly severe after his father’s death.

It wasn’t until after a 30-day stay at the Menninger Clinic in Houston that Coleman was accurately diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and came away equipped with medications and a strategy for dealing with the disease and pulling his life together.

“I still struggle sometimes because this is a chronic illness,” Coleman says. “I’m on my fourth combination of medications. There’s no cure, so there are times, just like with cancer, diabetes, or a heart condition, that people will miss work. There’s no shame in it for me.”

Coleman understands the urge to avoid facing up to one’s own mental illness, as well as the urge to hide it once it’s diagnosed. Ultimately, there’s only one course of action. “Anyone living in a society where mental illness isn’t accepted will try to hide it,” he says. “But it doesn’t work. You get treatment, or you may end up dead.”

The attributes that societies historically attribute to successful men—the determined assertion of willpower in the face of any obstacle—may make coming to terms with mental illness particularly challenging for some males. “Men are the ones who have a harder time understanding what’s happening to them, until they learn that mental illnesses, like all illnesses, don’t discriminate,” says Coleman. “You cannot will away clogged arteries. You cannot will away depression. And untreated clinical depression, like clogged arteries, can end in death.”

It is understandable why some businesses still have a harder time coming to terms with mental illnesses than physical illnesses. “I think business people like things that are tangible,” Coleman says. “Mental illness doesn’t generate a cast or a scar from the surgery, so it’s a matter of trust between employee and employer.”

He points out that larger businesses have been more supportive of their employees’ mental-health needs, creating employee-assistance programs and the like. “They understand that the well-being of workers is very important in terms of productivity,” he says. “When someone’s at their best, there’s a big difference from their worst in terms of productivity.”

In spite of his own difficult journey, Coleman’s outlook is positive. “I’m optimistic. If it weren’t for the stigma we inherited, mental-health parity would already exist in terms of health benefits,” he says. “It’s a victim of past misunderstanding.”

Education is the key, says Coleman, and it must continue until it reaches a critical mass. “We’re talking about illnesses based on chemicals in the brain,” Coleman points out. “Why in the world would we ever want policies that treat those illnesses less effectively?”