Episode Details

Sabrina Ooi: Bipolar & Being Arrested For Suicide, Turning Passion to Startup & Managing Founder Stress - E249

Season 1 Episode 249 Published 3 years, 4 months ago

Description

Sabrina Ooi is the cofounder & CEO of Calm Collective Asia, an organization with the mission to normalize mental health conversations in Asia. She is a mental health expert by experience, having achieved personal recovery and well-being through her journey with bipolar disorder. Through her work with Calm Collective, she has consulted for and created global mental health programs for brands like Spotify, The Body Shop, and Standard Chartered. She has been featured in various publications and was named a Gen.T Honouree in 2021. Sabrina has worked in the software and marketing industries and was a professional DJ in top nightlife establishments.

"I have bipolar disorder and I’ve gone through struggles before I got diagnosed. I got arrested for attempting suicide and lost two friends to suicide. Surviving that horrible, challenging period of my life helped me learn how to manage and thrive with it. My personal journey has given me a lot of learnings and insights around mental health, from the stigma that we face to just a lot of things that we don't know about. It gave me that motivation to share what I've learned with more people so they can seek mental health support before it's too late." - Sabrina Ooi

"Bipolar disorder is basically manic depression. Depression is unipolar. Bipolar means there's depression, but there's also mania. Mania is quite interesting because you can feel energetic and sociable when you're in that state. For me, mania can show itself on nights when I don’t get any sleep. I would be very excited and start 10 or 20 new projects, but would probably not finish any of them. I would be the life of the party, but at the same time, I can be very irritable and quick to annoy people." - Sabrina Ooi

Read the transcript here at: www.bravesea.com/blog/sabrina-ooi

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