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Mental Illness Awareness, Part 2: "You Don't Look Mentally Ill"

Inspired by Mental Illness Awareness Week this month, a group of Utah Public Radio interns and reporters began sharing their personal experiences with mental illness. These were not stories about their observations of others who deal with mental illness; these were their stories.

During Part 2 of our series on Mental Illness Awareness series, we begin listening to a conversation between Storee Powell, Ryan Cunningham, and April Ashland as they work through some of the myths associated with mental illness.

Storee: "I thought maybe I'd grown out of my OCD, and I realized I hadn't. I was actually really depressed about it. I thought I will be moving on with my life now, but I realized I'll probably have to be medicated and working with this for the rest of my life." April: "I think one of the problems with the stigma of mental illness is that you can't always physically tell that someone is mentally ill." Ryan: "Sometimes I'll get to know someone and I'll let it slip that I have a mental illness or that I'm bi-polar and they'll say 'you don't look bi-polar to me.' I don't know how to respond to that."

As a freelance reporter for the Cache Valley Daily and Utah Public Radio, Storee covers women's issues such as women in higher education and women's health. Storee is an award-winning journalist, having won more than 13 awards for her work at UPR. Storee is a graduate of Utah State University and works at the Center for Persons with Disabilities at USU doing PR and marketing.