While author Juliann Garey's latest 'Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See' novel has been called a work of fiction, the author clarifies that not everything about the novel is fiction

According to a recent report published you Yahoo, Garey says that the protagonist's struggles with bipolar disorder is not a work of fiction and is based on her own reality.

Garey suffers from this disorder and says the illness is hereditary.

"There are components that are conceived from my life, but it's certainly not autobiographical," she said in an interview. "It's definitely fiction in terms of the plot. In terms of the psychic rollercoaster that he (Greyson) goes through in the book that is actually very much from my own life."

Garey said the ways she portrayed Greyson and his ever changing moods are closely inspired from her own. When she was 39, she went through a seven-year, treatment-resistant bipolar episode during which she wrote the book.

"When Greyson was having a manic episode, it was because I was having a manic episode and I wrote it during that period," she said. "During his very depressed periods, I was probably very depressed and I wrote it at that time, so I was feeling what he was feeling."

While Garey claims that there is still a "huge stigma" where mental illnesses like bipolar disorder is concerned, she considers open discussion a step in the right direction.

"People have to know that it's a brain disorder, a matter of circuitry," she said. "It's an illness like diabetes or multiple sclerosis or any other medical illness, and it needs to be treated in the same way."

"Kids get screened when they go to the pediatrician for their sight, their hearing, and they should get screened for mental health as well. It should be part of a regular annual physical," she said.

She was all praises for President Barrack Obama for increasing research funding to the National Institute of Mental Health, and for backing mental healthcare parity.

"There are 11 million Americans with a serious mental illness who were voting in that election, and mental illness never came up once during the campaign," she said of the 2012 presidential election. "We have a long way to go."

The novel is journalist and screenwriter Garey's first novel and tells the story of Hollywood executive Greyson Todd's struggle to navigate life with bipolar disorder.