Mitigating the Madness

The first time I remember realizing that I was depressed was in my mid-teens, around 15. I did well to hide it from my family, because I grew up in an environment where mental health wasn’t something that was seriously talked about. Like most families during that time, talking about being unwell mentally was rather taboo. The funny thing, in a sardonic kind of way, was that my mother had wanted to be a psychologist and had even attempted college at one point with that goal in mind.

It wasn’t until my early 20s, that I first sought out help for my depression. Having birthed my son a few months prior, I was diagnosed with postpartum depression, given some antidepressants and sent on my way. This of course didn’t help much, as I had no idea was I was supposed to do other than take these pills that were supposed to make things easier to deal with. Spoiler alert. They didn’t. They made my emotions worse, and more unstable. I was suddenly depressed to the point of suicide, and had even started making plans to end my own life. The only thing that kept me from following through, was my baby who needed me more than I needed to end the pain. My dedication to my son saved my life at that point.

It is important to note that not everyone who has depression or has been suicidal is like me. There are some parents who just can’t fight their darkness, or demons as people say and end their own lives. This isn’t to say that they were bad parents, or even bad people. Their lives just got so dark that the only light they could see was at the end of the tunnel so to speak. My heart truly goes out to their families left behind searching for the answer of why. While I wish I could give them that answer, I can’t. I can only give them my compassion, but I digress.

Shortly after attempting college for the first time, I was suicidal. I felt isolated, I didn’t have a support group. My family was of no help, and I didn’t really have any friends to speak of. I had tried to get into the mental health services that the university offered, but all I was given was a referral. Without health insurance there was nothing that I could afford to do, and this was a time when everything wasn’t available on the internet. (I’m not -that- old, I’m only a Millennial!)

Without that support network, I confided in the only person that I thought could help me. As I was living in the university dorms, I confided in my floor’s resident advisor. Big mistake. Rather than get the help that I needed, the university called my parents, who at this time had zero interest in my life and even refused to sign documents that would allow me to take out student loans. How they got their phone numbers, I will never know because they weren’t even on my emergency contact list.

The university informed my parents that if they did not come get me and I withdraw from the university that they would have their mental health staff involuntary commit me to a mental hospital. This is the same mental health staff that had just given me referrals to doctors that I couldn’t see because I didn’t have health insurance, and I didn’t have the money. I was living on ramen.

Not wanting some scandal with all that was going, my parents drove to my university, packed up my few belongings, and took me home. Mind you, at this time I was an adult, I had been on my own for at least three years and yet I was given zero control over myself or what happened to me. At the time of my forced withdraw from university, I didn’t even know they had threatened to commit me if someone didn’t remove me from their campus.

I guess something finally clicked in my parents mind and they realized that I was struggling mentally, because the following day I was taken to see a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist diagnosed me with bi-polar disorder, citing that my mood swings were the biggest symptom. This was after speaking to me for all of ten minutes. I was given medication and sent on my way once again.

{to be continued…}