Clearing the Chaos on ADVANCE for Nurses

 

Frightening. Consuming. Debilitating. Stigmatizing.

These are words Tayla Lewis uses to describe living with mental illness.

"There is one disease, however, that is the epitome of stigma," said Lewis, a middle-age Philadelphia women. "I happen to be one of the people to whom the label was attached.

"When I was 16, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD)."

Since then, Lewis has been trying to navigate the mental health system with varying degrees of success.

At a recent conference for psychiatric nurses in Philadelphia, Lewis told a standing-room audience her story. For more than 5 years, she was "incarcerated" - her words for the hospitalizations that lasted from 3 months to a year at a time…….

Clearing the Chaos on ADVANCE for Nurses