Last week, Trent Nursing students and Trent’s Active Minds partnered up with a long list of community organizations to present the “People Not Stigma” mental health awareness fair.
For me personally, the end of Daylight Savings Time marks the official beginning of Seasonal Affective Disorder season, and so, this week especially, it’s heartening to see discussions of mental health happening in prominent places on campus. Part of erasing stigma is about creating safer spaces for people to be “out” about their experiences. Part of undoing stigma is being “out” ourselves. In that spirit, I’m about to break a self-imposed rule and talk about myself in this editorial. I’m nervous! But here it goes:
Two years ago, I got so sick of feeling like shit that I made an appointment to see a therapist. I was pretty sure that I was about to be laughed out of her office. I was convinced I didn’t deserve professional help because a) objectively, my life was awesome, and b) I was still having some good days, though there were less and less of them.
As I sat in the waiting room, I expected to be told that I was selfish for asking for support; that I was stealing resources from others who had “real”, more severe problems, and that I should quit being such a procrastinator and get my damn homework done.
What happened instead was that, for the first time, I was diagnosed with depression, not laziness. It was awesome. I was thrilled. I wished I had done it years ago.
For the first time, I allowed myself to believe that I wasn’t overreacting, and I wasn’t making everything up. There was real support out there for what I was dealing with, and it was okay to access this support. That was a revolutionary moment, and my first good day in a long while.
Last winter, I made a further discovery. I read through some of my journals from when I was a teenager. I found out that all the “I can’t stop crying and don’t know why,” entries happened between November and March. I thought I was an emo kid, but actually, I’ve had seasonal depression for about a decade. How had I not known this about myself?
Mental health stigma isn’t about just hiding our symptoms or diagnoses from others. Mental health stigma is about not being able to understand your own experiences; not having the information you need to make your life more awesome. Stigma means that you don’t feel entitled to get help, or perhaps you feel “less than” if you need it. Stigma is about how the services, resources, support, accommodations, and treatment for mental health issues can be so inaccessible, especially in Peterborough, where many of us don’t have family doctors or health insurance.
It takes assertiveness and persistence to find adequate supports, and, at least for me, those are qualities that are crucially undermined when I’m most depressed. My life is easier when I can be straight-up about this, especially when I can talk about it with people who I know are going through the same shit. Some of the best treatment I rely on is being able to say “Bad anxiety day” to a friend, knowing that I know how to be there for them if they say “me too.” Talking about this stuff helps. Thanks again to everyone who put “People Not Stigma” together for continuing the conversation.
