(San Francisco, CA August 16, 2009)  Bay Area Mental Health advocate Tom Roberts is the featured guest Monday on Voice of America Talk Radio. He will be interviewed by Leslie Pogue who specializes in creating client-specific courses and keynote speeches that motivate and improve self esteem to manage depression and anxiety through self care.

Mr. Roberts knows first-hand about the tragic consequences of untreated clinical depression and bipolar disorder. His younger brother and sister both committed suicide. He, too, has bipolar disorder, which was diagnosed a year after his brother’s death in 1993.

“I speak from a deep well of pain,” Mr. Roberts said. “The deaths of my brother and sister created so much misery for our family and could have been avoided had it not been for their fear of stigma attached to anyone with a mental illness,” he explained.

Mr. Roberts’ book, Chewing through the Straps: Living with Bipolar Disorder will be available in late September.

Stigma often is a roadblock for treatment for the more than 54 million Americans, one in five, according to the National Institute on Mental Health, who suffer from a mental disorder in any given year. Of that number, many don’t seek treatment, at a time when awareness about mental illness has grown.

“Your comments were thoughtful and thought-provoking… I admire faith and perseverance that has gotten you this far and continues to sustain you. Hats off to you, Tom,” wrote a listener of a recent radio interview with Mr. Roberts.

A listener in Oakland, CA wrote: “I learned so much, and your candor was courageous and powerful. It helped me to gain a better understanding of this issue. Thanks for sharing.”

A housewife in Little Rock, AR said “"I've been diagnosed with depression, too, and could identify with many things you said."

Roberts speaks on behalf of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, the nation’s leading patient-directed organization focusing on the most prevalent mental illnesses: depression and bipolar disorder. He is a graduate of the Bipolar Advantage series of workshops. BPA is an organization designed to help people with mental conditions shift their thinking and behavior so they can lead extraordinary lives. 

Mental illness devastated Mr. Roberts’ family of origin and his marriage. A graduate of the complete Bipolar Advantage series of workshops, Mr. Roberts uses his first-hand experience of what it is like to make profound changes and a gift for helping others who share the struggle for a better life. The story of Mr. Roberts’ experience with putting “Bipolar in Order,” as advocate Tom Wootton calls it, inspires both patients and those who love and support them.

Mr. Roberts’ current goal is to speak about the mental health crisis facing our veterans and their families. “They are returning from war by the thousands with internal wounds that will kill them and destroy their families while the Veteran Administration turns a deaf ear just as they did to my brother, diagnosed with bipolar disorder while in the U.S. Army but not treated before or after discharge. He left a grieving wife and two little boys without a father,” Mr. Roberts said. “His tragic death haunts me today,” Mr. Roberts added.

“I think something President Clinton once said reflecting on the suicide of Vince Foster, his childhood friend who later became his Deputy White House Counsel, speaks to our dilemma today” Roberts said. ‘Mental illness,” Mr. Clinton noted, “is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.’”

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