Abdul Malik , a 29-year-old screenwriter from Toronto, Canada, considers Kanye West his favorite musician of all time.

But as someone who has bipolar II disorder, Malik hates that the Donda rapper has basically become the poster child for bipolar disorder and untreated mental illness.

West, who legally changed his name to Ye last year, has opened up about his experiences with bipolar disorder and manic episodes on a number of occasions, most notably on the 2018 album Ye and in a 2019 interview with David Letterman . (You have this moment [where] you feel everyone wants to kill you, he told the TV host. You pretty much dont trust anyone.)

Wests candidness about life with bipolar disorder is one of the things that drew Malik to his music.

It gave me a personal connection to his work those frank references to bipolar disorder in his albums, Malik told HuffPost. But I also think thats not an excuse for what hes doing now.

West has a history of controversies, but his most recent troubling behavior started at the beginning of this year, when he began online harassing his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, and her then-boyfriend Pete Davidson . (That culminated in a claymation music video depicting Davidson being kidnapped and buried alive by the rapper.)

Now West is making antisemitic remarks : Earlier this week, after days of criticism over his antics at Paris Fashion Week (West wore a T-shirt reading White Lives Matter, a phrase the Anti-Defamation League categorizes as a hate slogan), the rapper was locked out of Twitter after posting a tweet threatening that he was going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.

Days later, West stood by his remarks . Hey, if you call somebody out for bad business, that means youre being anti-Semitic, he told the New York Post Wednesday night outside of a screening of conservative pundit Candace Owens new documentary. I feel happy to have crossed the line of that idea so we can speak openly about things like getting canceled by a bank.

With every Ye controversy, his mental health gets dragged into the conversation. Inevitably, die-hard fans come to the defense of the rapper, suggesting its not fair to judge someone with bipolar disorder whos off his meds again and in the midst of what looks like a manic disorder.

But as Malik and many others with bipolar disorder see it, a bipolar disorder diagnosis isnt excuse for antisemitism, anti-Blackness or any other form of bigotry.

Its extremely harmful for people with bipolar disorder to see these excuses being made, Malik said. Im pretty open about my diagnosis, and [behavior like Wests] immediately changes how some people look at you, like youre someone who can fly off the handle unexpectedly.

It informs trust, and Kanye, as well as the people making excuses for him through his illness, are perpetuating stigmas that make it harder for everyone with this illness, the screenwriter said.

Aranck Bundy , a 21-year-old from New Jersey who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder recently, feels similarly; his manic episodes have caused him to do some surprising things, but theyve never given way to bigotry. During one particular manic episode, Bundy said he drove nonstop to Florida with a friend on a whim. His body crashed the next day, exhausted from the high and the 17-hour drive.

More recently, Ive had the urge to drive across the country to see someone Ive been interested in just because I could, and I wanted to see them, he told HuffPost. Luckily, Im back on my medication, because I guarantee I would do it if I wasnt.

Needless to say, Bundy gets Wests impulsivity. What he doesnt get is the antisemitism. He worries that people will conflate Wests bipolar diagnosis with all variety of extremist views.

Many people are racist and antisemitic without being bipolar, so why do people think hes being a shit person mainly because of it? Bundy said.

Being bipolar doesnt inherently make someone say disgusting and disrespectful things, he said. Kanye has an awful long history of him doing and saying distasteful things : Hes not only attacked other marginalized groups , he associated himself with controversial figures and exhibited anti-Black behavior by saying slavery was a choice .

Given the recency of Bundys diagnosis, he said hes constantly worrying about how hes being perceived by people: Do they enjoy his company? Is he coming across wrong? Hearing the way people talk about bipolar disorder in relation to West is not helping ease his concerns.