Mental Illness May Plague Entrepreneurs More Than Other People. Here's Why (and How to Get Help).
In seven years of running a startup, I experienced just about every emotion entrepreneurship has to offer: the adrenaline of launch; the calm energy of focused flow; the brittle, jittery high of riding a 2 a.m. work jag; the terror of feeling the mask slip, of telling an upbeat story to customers as panic churns in your guts; the grief of failure -- and the relief of failure, too; the ghostly lost-limb feeling that asks, Who am I if I’m not running this business?
Related: 4 Things My Battle With Depression Taught Me About Entrepreneurship
However, my mental health résumé is a lot longer than my entrepreneurial one. I’ve been dancing a medicated tango with depression and anxiety since wing of the hospital to be a bad life insurance prospect. I don’t have a formal ADHD diagnosis, but I suspect a clinical psychiatrist would take one look at my school records -- a tale of epic disorganization stuffed under a mattress of high achievement -- and call it like it is.
