Justin Bullock

• Bullock has publicly identified himself as having bipolar II disorder. He has said that he received the diagnosis during his second year of medical school, after a period in which treatment for depression was followed by marked changes in sleep, energy and behaviour that were recognized as hypomania. [1][5]
• He later began speaking and writing openly about his diagnosis and suicidality within medicine. Bullock has said that being visible about bipolar disorder became important to him partly because many doctors and trainees with mental illness still feel pressure to hide their conditions. [6]

• Bullock has described recurrent depressive episodes beginning in adolescence and continuing through college and medical school. He has also spoken publicly about three suicide attempts, including one during medical school. [7][1]
• During medical school, treatment for depression was followed by a period of hypomania in which he slept as little as 90 minutes at a time, became unusually angry and impulsive, exercised excessively and felt markedly sped up. He has also described later periods during medical training when bipolar symptoms and suicidality became severe enough to require psychiatric hospitalization. [7][9][1][8]

• Bullock has described both medication and psychotherapy as essential parts of managing bipolar II disorder. He has said that medication reduces the intensity of his symptoms, while therapy helps him process trauma and internalized stigma. [1]
• He has also spoken openly about taking lithium and Seroquel, despite disliking medication and experiencing side effects, because he considers them important to maintaining stability. After one suicide attempt during residency, Bullock was psychiatrically hospitalized and then participated in an intensive outpatient program for about a month before returning to work. [7][1]

• Bullock has described recovery as living well with an active, ongoing condition rather than overcoming bipolar disorder. He has said that his symptoms are closely monitored and that people around him, including his care providers, usually recognize when he is becoming unwell. [10][11]
• He has also described his nephrology fellowship at the University of Washington as a period of healing and growth after a difficult residency experience, supported by accommodations and a training environment in which he felt safer disclosing his disability. [12]

• Bullock advocates for greater inclusion of doctors and medical trainees with disabilities and mental-health conditions. He has argued that medicine should make it safer for people to disclose mental illness, seek support and receive accommodations without being treated as less capable. [3][6]
• He has also emphasized the value that lived experience can bring to medicine, arguing that the disability community has perspectives that medical education and patient care can better recognize and use. [11]

“There’s no one face of suffering.”

— Justin Bullock [1]