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I was 45 minutes early to meet Steve Singer at his Charlotte, N.C., apartment and, not wanting to disrupt any morning routines he might rely upon, I decided to stay in my car until the appointed time. Suddenly, in my rearview mirror, I noticed a man across the parking lot making graceful, swooping motions with what looked like a baton attached to bungee cords.

I wondered if that might be Mr. Singer, but the man seemed so focused, almost trance-like, that I didn’t want to interrupt him. Later, Mr. Singer, 60, showed me that the baton was a levitation wand, one of his many methods of staving off the most serious symptoms of his bipolar and borderline personality disorders. “It’s my dance partner,” he said, explaining that both wands and hula hoops (including one that lights up) allow him to defuse his anxiety without making a scene. When he uses them, he said, “the neighbors can’t complain that I’m crazy.”

Image Mr. Singer balances a Hula-Hoop as he walks to the grocery store, a practice he says has helped stave off the most serious symptoms of his bipolar and borderline personality disorders. Credit... Travis Dove for The New York Times

Weeks before traveling to Charlotte, I’d learned that Mr. Singer had recently filled out a psychiatric advance directive (or PAD), a document allowing people with serious mental illness to specify the treatment they want and don’t want before becoming too sick to speak for themselves. Mental illness is still so stigmatized in America that, although I’d learned about PADs a couple of years ago, it took months to find people willing to speak openly about their experiences, something I consider crucial for such a story because it allows readers to empathize.