In her new essay collection “Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge,” Central Oregon author Willa Goodfellow takes readers along on her rocky mental health journey, using everyday language and humor to engage readers.

Ordained a priest in 1982, Goodfellow serves at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Prineville and has lived in Sisters for the past eight years.

Goodfellow opted to publish “Prozac Monologues” through She Writes Press, which bills itself as a hybrid publisher offering some of the amenities of a traditional house and self-publishing. (“SWP gives authors an experienced editorial and production team while allowing them to retain full ownership of their project and earnings,” reads the company’s ”About” page.)

Though Goodfellow’s mental health journey goes back decades, the beginnings of her book date back to a flurry of writing during a 2005 trip to Central America.

“I was being treated for depression, and I’ve had depression off and on my entire life. I was taking an antidepressant that flipped me into a hypomanic episode, right at the same time I went to Costa Rica for a week. I spent the entire week writing,” she said, adding with a chuckle, “Costa Rica, well that was the background, (but) it wasn’t what I did.”

Over the course of that week, Goodfellow produced many of the original pieces that eventually became “Prozac Monologues.”

Her hypomanic state led to quick writing, but the path to getting on track with her mental health took a little longer.

“It was another five years before I realized that I was on the bipolar spectrum,” she said. “That’s shorter than the average. The average is seven and a half years, and a third of the people who have bipolar it takes them 10 years to get a correct diagnosis. And the interval can kill you.”

According to healthline.com, the chief difference between bipolar 1 and 2 lies in the severity of manic episodes. Bipolar 2 is characterized by longer depressive periods and less severe “hypomanic” episodes than bipolar 1.

Further, bipolar 2 can be misdiagnosed as depression, and that’s what happened to Goodfellow.

“I was still being treated for depression, and you should not take antidepressants when you have bipolar,” she said. “I was in and out of what’s called ‘mixed episodes.’ That’s when you feel all the depression, plus you have the power surge of mania. It’s a really dangerous combination because not only do you feel like dying, but you’ve got the energy to do something about it.”

Fortunately, she finally stopped taking antidepressants after her 2010 bipolar 2 diagnosis. But in the wake of the “insult” to her brain, she struggled to concentrate after what she’d been through.

“For a while, I could hardly finish a sentence. I didn’t have it in me to write. I didn’t have it in me to socialize. I led a very quiet life for a while,” Goodfellow said. “I think people often don’t understand that when you’re having a manic episode or any severe mental illness crisis, you’re damaging your brain. And the brain uses enormous amounts of energy. You’re exhausted.”

Five more years went by before Goodfellow’s brain had recovered enough “to pick up that book again and rewrite it,” she said.

When she returned to the manuscript, the signs of her condition were there.

“I pick up the manuscript again and I realize, ‘My therapist saw this. Why didn’t she recognize it?’” Goodfellow said. “I thought, ‘This is an artifact that is a picture into a bipolar brain.’”

The monologues she’d written in Costa Rica were mostly about her life and reflections on the world, and somewhat about Costa Rica.

“The distinctive thing about them was that ‘It was pressured writing. It was stream of consciousness,’” Goodfellow said. To keep up with the connections she was making, “It helps to be bipolar to keep up with the connections that I’m making as I’m bouncing from one topic to another. So it was a demonstration of what bipolar is like.”

Goodfellow decided she’d keep the structure of the existing essays and write a sort of framework around them explaining the bipolar disorder.

Though not a doctor herself, Goodfellow is confident about the science in the book, which has been thoroughly vetted by medical experts.

“One of the doctors who wrote a blurb said, ‘You’ll get a textbook’s worth of information about bipolar without feeling like you read a textbook,’ because I write in plain English with a lot of humor,” Goodfellow said. “It talks about how you can recognize bipolar, how it’s diagnosed, what’s going on in the brain.”

Most of all, she wants people to know that recovery works.

“I still have bipolar, but I can write, I can pursue my dreams, I have a life worth living,” she said. “If I can tell a story that gets some information out that people don’t have — it’s just desperately important to me to do that.”

“Prozac Monologues” releases Tuesday and is available for preorder from area bookstores including Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, Roundabout Books in Bend, Sunriver Books & Music and Herringbone Books in Redmond.