I love being on stage — not as an actor, but as myself. I love giving speeches. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do so on multiple occasions last year as director of the ASSU Speakers Bureau. I loved introducing our invited guests. However, the two speeches I am most proud of came on the stage of MemAud in during New Student Orientation in the fall of 2004 and fall of 2005. In front of crowds of 1700 people, I told people about my history with mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depression).

I entered my senior year of high school at the top of my class. I ended it barely graduating. Depression made it impossible for me to complete my schoolwork on time, if at all. When I got to Stanford, I thought my high school problems would all of a sudden disappear.

The fall of my freshman year was rough. I failed IHUM my first quarter here. I thought the only help I needed was medication. My parents wanted me in psychotherapy since my psychiatrist only did med management. But no — I thought I was still the same Adam from a few years before who could do anything academically he wanted.

Over the next two years, I piled on incomplete after incomplete. Each quarter I told myself “Next quarter things will be back to normal.” And with every quarter came incompletes. Even when I was placed on Academic Probation, I didn’t worry much.

I entered the fall of my junior year having four incompletes. I finally allowed myself to take a reduced course load and I utilized a writing tutor. I started psychotherapy. And I thought I’d be fine because I was finally on a perfect med regimen that made me the happiest I was in a long time.

But it was too late at that point. Because of all the incompletes, I was too anxious to finish the quarter. Due to my lack of academic progress, Academic Standing placed me on a one-year academic suspension.

During my suspension, at first my depression spiraled downhill. Things got so bad that my parents made me enter a continuing day treatment program at a local psychiatric hospital. Slowly, but surely, with the skills I was being taught in treatment, I learned to take control of my life. I was able to prove to the school, and more importantly to myself, that I was well enough to return a quarter early from my suspension. Upon my return, I pulled off a mighty fine quarter — turning all my work in on time for the first time in over four years.

Almost a year later, I took to the stage of MemAud and told the incoming freshman class about my experiences. Soon after, almost two years to the day that I found out I was suspended, I was accepted to a coterm program. Last year, I graduated with a B.S. in computer science, a B.A. in history, and an M.A. in communication, with a 3.6 undergraduate GPA and a 3.9 graduate GPA.

However, I don’t care about the number of degrees or the GPAs. I just care that I graduated. These numbers are just a testament that mental illness does not need to stand in the way of somebody’s academic success.

I’m not afraid to tell my story. I’ve spoken at FACES of Community twice and talked to smaller groups as well. I even wrote a book this summer and hope to find a publisher. I put my speeches on my Stanford Web space for the world to see, and every now and then I get emails from strangers telling me how much my story sounds like their own. Many of these emails come from students who go to other prestigious schools, such as Penn and Columbia, and students of all ages, from freshmen to doctoral students. To say that smart students can’t suffer from mental illness or to isolate the “duck syndrome” to Stanford would be a fallacy.

For all the articles The Daily, the San Francisco Chronicle and other periodicals publish about campus suicide and mental health problems, they neglect stories like mine: the success stories. Instead they focus on how mental health problems are on the rise on college campuses and how students are not getting help out of shame. Maybe if more students knew that having a mental illness only has to be a temporary road block in their academic pursuits, more would be willing to seek help.

My story might make it sound easy to overcome the challenges of mental illness, but it takes a lot of hard work, determination and (to some extent) even luck. While I’m a testament that you can get better, you can’t get better without help — be it professional help or help from your friends. Not once have I had anybody at Stanford judge me for being bipolar. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

You might think that somebody who speaks about mental illness as much as I do would know all the statistics about suicide and mental health on college campuses. However, I don’t know these statistics because I have not let myself become one.

Adam Kahn ‘04, MA ‘06 is a research assistant and lab manager in the psychology department. Parts of this article are adapted from the aforementioned speeches. The full version of the speeches can be found at http://www.stanford.edu/~adamkahn/faces/. He can be reached at adamkahn@stanford.edu.