PSYCHOLOGY – Informing a partner that you have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is a question of timing… and trust.
Forming a romantic relationship, embroidering it and enriching it is rarely a smooth process. This can be even more complicated for people with a mental disorder, like 13 million French people, 3 million of whom suffer from severe psychological disorders.
The first pitfall is choosing the right time to talk to your partner about it. “There is no point in bringing it up before the relationship is established over time,” says Anne-Victoire Rousselet, psychologist and psychotherapist specializing in behavioral and cognitive therapy, author of Live better with schizophrenia (Dunod). “Some patients feel like they’re being dishonest if they don’t reveal it right away, but that’s not true. A relationship of trust must be built before addressing this vulnerability.” Especially since the stigma remains very significant towards the mentally ill, “because most people don’t understand the troubles…
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