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This is not a music review. I haven't listened to Kanye West's latest album-or any of them.
But the statement, "I hate being Bi-Polar its awesome," scrawled in neon green handwriting across the cover of West's latest album, and the conversation it generated on Twitter, certainly grabbed my attention.
"I had never been diagnosed and I was like 39 years old," he recently revealed in an interview, alluding to a diagnosis for bipolar disorder that he was now receiving support for-following on from a year in which a long tour was abruptly cancelled and West was hospitalised with exhaustion.
Much credit to him for sharing this. Among a sea of public figures who are more than happy to talk about milder mental conditions, severe conditions are still spoken of far more rarely.
"It's not a disability but a superpower," West says of his condition. Hearing positive, empowering language around mental illness is refreshing, making West's revelation all the more powerful in minimising stigma.
But what absolutely cannot be minimised is that bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness.
West divides opinion, but I truly hope he will be instrumental in showing a worldwide audience that someone with bipolar disorder is far more than that label. The condition he speaks about, and other serious mental...