"I wasn't able to communicate; it looked and felt a lot like a heart attack."
Ashley Pettit, 19
Student
Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Panic Disorder
I was officially diagnosed on March 19, 2014 at the University Counseling Center at my college. When you’re diagnosed with a mental illness it’s a bit like someone telling you that you have cancer, it’s a date that you won’t ever forget. Though I was only diagnosed a year ago, I’ve been suffering from depression and anxiety since 2009. Major Depressive Disorder is one that most people know about but don’t really understand. For me, I couldn’t get out of bed; I was skipping class and thus failing all of my classes; I had no energy, no motivation, and really no drive to live. All of this was when my depression was only mild. When it got worse, I was smoking weed just so I could feel some type of emotion and cutting my skin to release all of it; I was essentially numb to everything, there was no sadness, no anger, nothing. Anxiety is a little bit different, though anxiety and depression both help each other out. Anxiety is a constant buzzing through your skin; you’re constantly on edge, worrying about not getting an A on a minor quiz in a minor class because that could bring down your GPA which could prevent you from getting a well paying job. It starts from some small worry and snowballs into this huge fear. Generalized Anxiety Disorder means that you’re constantly in that anxious state, constantly worrying about something, and constantly overthink and reading into things. Panic Disorder is anxiety on a whole new level. For me, my panic arose when my anxiety had been too high for too long and I basically snapped. My panic attacks would happen over small things sometimes, like not being able to go into therapy a few days earlier. They feel like the world is collapsing in on me. My heart would race, I would sob like someone had died, I wasn’t able to communicate; it looked and felt a lot like a heart attack. It felt like all of the anxiety I had been experiencing over the past month was rolled up into one little ball in my heart for a good half hour. But the worst part of panic attacks is being afraid for the rest of the week that you’ll have another.
My depression started in 9th grade. Several things led up to the actual depression, including severe bullying starting in 3rd grade, but what really started it all was being in an emotionally abusive relationship. The guy I was dating at the time encouraged me to self-harm; when he found scars on my wrists, he simply asked, “What did you do that with?” and left it at that. Being abused is one of the worst things that can happen to you, and for a very long time I struggled with validating that I was abused. I was afraid people would tell me that it wasn’t “real” abuse because it wasn’t physical. This problem with validation was the reason why I never sought help until my freshman year in college. I was afraid a therapist would look at me and tell me I just had “normal” issues with boys.
When I initially sought mental health help, I was so ashamed walking into campus counseling. I was so afraid of come out of my therapist’s room with my face puffy and red from crying. After my first appointment, I went into the bathroom in the back of the office and waited till my face cleared up before I walked back out through the waiting room. Not long after I was diagnosed, I turned to weed to self medicate. My friends were smoking it too; they always seemed to have a good time when they smoked so I figured I would too. And I did, I felt great. My anxiety was gone, I wasn’t overthinking, I was happy. I was happy, and that’s something I didn’t get too often. I started smoking more and more, I never got to the point where I was smoking everyday or multiple times a day but I might as well. I became so psychologically dependent on weed to feel anything. I didn’t get clean until later that year when I finally had someone tell me it wasn’t good to use weed as a crutch.
A little over a month after I was diagnosed, I was still doing really badly. I was cutting almost every night and didn’t go to any of my classes in 2 weeks. My mother had mentioned a week earlier that maybe I needed to go to the hospital because I had gotten so bad. On April 30th, I had an emergency appointment at university counseling and went through the incredibly emotional process of being admitted into Sheppard Pratt. For someone who was never very vocal about what she was dealing with, having to call my mom to tell her I need her to drive me to a mental hospital was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life. That day, I didn’t even try to hide my face after crying when I walked out of university counseling.
Being in a mental hospital is much different from what popular media likes to tell people. Where I was, there were no straight jackets, no padded rooms, no lying down and telling someone your feelings. I was in Sheppard Pratt’s young adult unit, arguably one of the best units there from what staff had told me. The help I received there was literally life saving. Though I had to return to the hospital again only a month later, I became so much stronger after that second stay. During that second stay at Sheppard Pratt, I had what was potentially the lowest day I’ve ever had. On this day, I wasn’t depressed; I was numb. Numb, for me, occurs the same way panic attacks do: it only happens after prolonged, severe depression has not let up. On this day, after I talked to my psychiatrist, I went to my room and scratched three patches of skin to the point where I couldn’t scratch any more because it was wet with blood. Its hard to describe the state I was in at that time, it was like I had an out of body experience, like I wasn’t really me. The great part of self-harm for me was that all of the thoughts that were invading my head were just gone. I didn’t have to worry about anything when I was self-harming. When my friends came to visit me the next day, they asked what I did to my wrist. When I told them how I scratched my skin to the point that it was raw and bloody, they looked at me like I just told them I had eaten a person. It’s hard for someone to understand self-harm unless they’ve experienced it personally. I still have those scars today, but they have since been covered by a tattoo that represents the immense transformation I have undergone. Miraculously, I only got better since that day in the hospital. By the time I was discharged, I was feeling better than I had in a very long time.
Today, I’m doing fantastic. I used to really struggle with school but today am expecting to straight A’s for the second semester in a row. I won’t lie though, I do have my days where things get really rough. But on those days, I’m now able to realize that I just need a personal day and that it’s okay to take those. The first time I went public with my mental illness was after my first hospitalization. I posted a status on Facebook telling people that yes, I was in Sheppard Pratt in order to prevent people from gossiping about it. After that, I began really talking about my experiences with mental illness in my Intro to Gender & Women’s Studies class where I felt that people would understand the oppression I face when people find out that I have a mental disorder. My advice for someone who wants to start talking about mental illness is to start in a place where you feel comfortable and then branching out. It is so important that those suffering from mental illness feel comfortable sharing their experiences because without that, the stigma revolving around mental illness will never go away.
