“The Self-Proclaimed ‘Bipolar General’ Is Waging War on the Stigma of Mental Illness”, 2024-01-17 ():
One of the biggest problems for Major General Gregg F. Martin was that bipolar disorder seemed to help him at first. “I was manic most of the year in Iraq … [I] felt like Superman. Bulletproof, pretty much fearless all over the battlefield”, Martin said. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 as a colonel, in charge of the 130th Engineer Brigade that paved the way to Baghdad from Kuwait. He led from the front, aggressively, pushing his troops with relentless positivity. In his downtime he favored intense workouts over sleep. His mania fit right in with the American military mystique. His superiors gave him almost nothing but praise. “I thought that God was rewarding me and giving me this strength and motivation and energy, because I was on kind of a divine mission as an Army officer. So it never occurred to me that there’s something wrong with my brain”, he said.
Then the pendulum swung. His Iraq tour ended in 2004 and Martin went home despondent. At a post-deployment health screening he spoke openly about depression. The nurse asked him what he did to cope. “I said, ‘Well, I do lots of really intense physical activity, even though it’s hard to do because I’m depressed. I listen to really intense rock-and-roll music. I repeat power verses from the Bible and when that doesn’t work I drink. I drink a lot, way more than I ever have in my life’”, said Martin. “And they said, you’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
…“If you’re in the military, you are supposed to project this tough image”, says Dr. Alex Leow, a psychiatrist and biomedical engineer at the University of Illinois Chicago who treats and studies bipolar. Martin gave the keynote speech at the International Bipolar Foundation’s annual conference in 2023, where Leow met him.
Leow says people on the bipolar spectrum are often attracted by the way a military career rewards aggressive, daring behavior. Unfortunately, the intensity of that work can ignite severe symptoms, she says. “There is almost a double whammy effect. You are attracting more people on the [bipolar] spectrum into the military, but also because of the stress, because of the combat experiences … the likelihood that you actually develop symptoms is also higher”, she says.
Which is what Martin says happened to him. Iraq triggered severe symptoms—intense cycles from mania to depression. All the while, his manic side just looked like high performance to his military superiors, who kept promoting him. By the time he took command of the US Army War College in 2010, delusions had taken hold. “My bipolar disorder had increased substantially since Iraq, and now it was pouring gasoline on the flames of a very sick brain. I believed I was the smartest person in the world. I believed that I was an apostle sent by God to transform […] the entire Department of Defense”, he said. In 2012 Martin became president of the National Defense University (NDU). By this time his behavior was finally raising flags. He’d stride into a random classroom and just start lecturing. “One of the NDU colleges actually took to posting a guard outside the door. And if I came into the building, he was to notify the commandant immediately so he could divert me from going into a lecture hall. That’s how bad it was”, said Martin.
…His Army doctors did him what he and they believed was a favor by not putting the diagnosis in his records right away, allowing Martin to retire instead of being medically discharged. Looking back Martin doubts the wisdom of that decision…The VA now treats over 130,000 vets per year for bipolar disorder. Since January of 2023, a vet in crisis can now go to any VA or non-VA facility and get emergency care free of charge. VA has increased its mental health staff by 54% in the past 5 years.