Depression.

Today is world mental health day. It is time that we stand up and speak out and make a difference to how people look at mental health. Im trying to make a difference are you? Here is a post I have written on depression in the past!! This weekend I will have a post about Mental health and how people view mental health and what can be done to chance peoples perceptions. 

I have written a post about self-harm before and well now I think it’s time to write one about depression seeing as how often the two topics can be related. In my opinion depression is a lot like self harm in the way that people often don’t like talking about the subject. It seems to be something that you would only talk about if you knew someone who suffers from it or you yourself suffer from it.

I grew up not hearing anything about depression; the only thing that I knew about it was that if you were depressed you were sad. In some ways that’s all you really need to know when you’re growing up because often you wouldn’t find yourself being depressed or even know someone who is depressed. It wasn’t until I entered secondary school where I learned more about depression and that wasn’t even through school that I learned about it. I guess I learned about it from my own experience and it was when I entered third year when I learned what depression really was when I was diagnosed with depression.

To be honest I didn’t think much of it because it wasn’t bad depression and I wasn’t put on medication, it was something I didn’t talk about not even with my dad or brothers, when we were told we all just got on with it and didn’t even think twice. Sure none of my friends even really knew that I had depression either because I tried my best not to let them see me suffering and when I was around them I put on a smile and acted as if everything was ok. I just got on with things after I was told and soon I felt back to my normal self when I was heading into transition year, because I had learned how to deal with things and I was going into Transition year a new Siobhán from the Siobhán I had been during the summer.

I was still getting treatment every week by going to a psychologist and talking about things that had happened in the past and I guess if I wasn’t talking about things every week I would not have been able to cope with things. I didn’t think of myself as being depressed and I think that was because it was only my family knew about it and I was able to deal with it. Now after having a relapse and a very bad one at that only my family and closest friends know about it and well now the world wide web know about it too and I’m hoping that by telling my story it will help to raise awareness about teenage depression.

After this relapse I was put on medication and well I have to say it took some convincing and that’s because I was both scared and also worried about what people will think of me when they found out. The only thing that was going through my mind was if people found out that I was on medication that they would think I was crazy. After someone close to me convinced me that they would help if I gave them time to work and that things will get better I decided that it was worth a shot and then things might start to look up for me.

After I got put on medication I stopped seeing myself as depressed and it was more that I just suffered from depression and it wasn’t a big deal. I may sometimes still try to put a smile on my face so people don’t realise that I’m suffering. It’s not that I’m trying to hide things it’s just that I don’t want to be pitted or looked down on because I’m suffering. I’m not ashamed of suffering from depression and it has taken a bit of time for me to be ok with it and writing this blog post about my experience was a big step for me and I am happy that I have done it and well I don’t mind if people know that I suffer from depression because I’m not ashamed and I will overcome it and things will get better for me.

It’s taken me a while to see the bright side of this because I couldn’t see past the next 5 minutes a couple of weeks ago now I know that things will get better And I am hopeful that I will overcome it and that is mainly because of the people around me who support me and because I want to get better and to show people around me that it is possible. I am determined to get back on the right track and someday I will hopefully be able to look back on my experience and say to myself that I did good and I have come a long way from there and I want to be proud of who I am even if that means I was a teenager who suffered from depression. Hopefully I will be able to go on from here knowing that my teenage years will have moulded me into hopefully the person I want to be.

I hope that this post might help someone who is reading it and suffering from depression. I haven’t got over this and I know that it will take some time but with people around me who love and care for me that things will get better sooner or later. It just takes time and you have to be patient with things.  When I’m better I will hopefully be able to write a blog post giving advice about what I found helpful during my treatment and trying to overcome this. To find out more about depression click here.