Thinking of you, Natalie Fuller

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-demons-got-my-beautiful-loving-daughter/2015/04/20/cdaaa338-dfc2-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html

My daughter, who lost her battle with mental illness, is still the bravest person I know

I lost my darling daughter Natalie to mental illness last month. She killed herself a few weeks short of her 29th birthday by stepping in front of a train in Baltimore…

While Natalie seemed happier and more productive on meds, she missed the high of occasional mania and she hated the weight gain that is a common side effect of the drugs she was taking. Stable, she would sometimes declare that she wasn’t sick after all and didn’t need medication — another very common reason people give for quitting their meds…

Natalie was a believer that treatment worked and that the mental health system needed to be reformed so other people received the kind of care she had when she was in crisis. She told her story in a documentary short last year about the criminalization of mental illness. She dreamed of being a peer counselor. She said she wanted to help others as she had been helped — until she became convinced that she was beyond help…

My daughter lived more than six years with an incurable disease that filled her head with devils that literally hounded her to death, and she did it while laughing, painting, writing poetry, advocating and bringing joy to the people around her. She was the bravest person I have ever known, and her suicide doesn’t change that…