Depression Affects the Whole Family #YouthStories

I have always looked back on my childhood and teenage years as happy memories but I know that if I turned into a mole and dug underneath those memories, I would find underneath it, times of deep worry and concern.

I was about 6 or 7 when my mums depression imprinted on my conciousness, it was dark, there was shouting and without having any recollection of what thoughts were going through my mind I was suddenly standing in the bathroom doorway, watching my mum attempt an overdose and my dad ever the calm and reasonable presence in our family trying to stop her with great urgency.

There was of course peaks and troughs, months of great, unnatural happiness. You could tell when these had started for my mum because she would be up at 5am and by 9am she would have cooked, done the house work and moved around the house like she was on speed.

 During these times she had a social calendar as busy as the royal family and although she would describe herself as ‘happy’ she had the shortest fuse, you would walk around on many an egg shell, one slip and she would fire loud hurtful things your way.

The other flip side was something a lot darker and we would all come home from school to be told by our Dad that "Mum was having a ‘bad’ day" but to go and say hello. Mum would be locked in her room, where she would of spent her whole day, week even, in the dark, sleeping, sometimes rocking herself on the floor, crying, silent, numb.

I have always been a very emotionally aware person, I am deeply affected by how others feel around me and I would spend a lot of my time as a child and teenager listening patiently, providing hugs and being an emotional leaning post for my mum.

I guess this is where the role reversal began at a young age, don’t get me wrong I have always been supported by both my parents in my life, in my choices and in crisis, both have given all their children amazing life skills and grounding so that we could flourish into the adults we wanted to become. However being the only sibling willing to listen and be leaned upon meant I grew up in some ways a bit quicker than others. I understood debts extremely well and the impact they have on your mental health, I understood how dark and scary your mind can become if you are inflicted with mental health issues, I understood how an addiction like buying lots and lots of clothes in spite of your finances can help to fill a gap, give you a rush and stop the feeling of numbness for a short moment.

I carried my own bag of worries for my mum around school, constantly thinking of ways to help her, to make her smile or laugh, to drag her away from the dark and self-pity of her mind. I also worried especially as I hit my teenage years if I would also become like my mum.

Our doctor thought the only option was anti-depressants, he didn’t really understand depression and instead of admitting this he clearly felt providing my mum with a constant supply of pills was the correct thing to do. To keep taking them until she eventually became immune to them… her body cannot cope without them now.
Do you ever get over depression completely? Do you become scarred as a family? Is it all doom and gloom?

The answer for me is no.

Depression comes back to my mum still but through counselling, support and understanding from all the people around her who love her she has never slipped so far back into that dark room.

It helped build us as a family to work together and support each other, all of us are more empathetic, compassionate and understanding towards each other and people we meet because of what we have been through together.

Like I said at the start I still have many happy memories of my childhood and teenage years, I have an amazingly close relationship with my mum and the rest of my family. The experience has helped me to have more positive values than material possessions, to appreciate my body and mind when I am well and to not abuse it, to take pleasure in simple and natural things and to have the desire and motivation to help others whenever I can.

 I cannot help but realise on reflection how much easier it would have been if my family and I had also been supported by perhaps a counsellor or our doctor. How much easier it would have been if we had not tried to cope on our own for so long, we were perhaps too afraid to speak out because of the stigma attached to depression.

Coming to terms with mental illness is a problem to be solved for the whole family, not just by the person suffering and it’s time the medical profession faced up to this

Joanna's Story #YouthStories

I’ve always sensed that I was a bit different from other people, like I didn’t quite fit in anywhere. I have made a lot of friends over the years but I do not see them on a regular basis and I often spend most of my time with my family. I worked very hard at school but I was never exceptional at anything. I was a keen dancer but my teachers always commented on my problems with my posture and I was always left in the bottom class, with people much younger than me. At School I got reports for effort but never anything more and I was never picked for school plays or the like. It was the same in P.E. I eventually gave up. When I was about 14 my behaviour became more prevalent. I had a massive party just before starting my exams which wrecked my house and ended up living with my best friend. I did not revise for my GCSE’s and did little of the coursework. I did no coursework for English and did the bare minimum that I could for my other exams. Luckily I had completed a lot of work in year 10 which counted towards my grades.

I didn’t get very good results for my GCSE’s but I managed to get a place in college and I ended up doing the same there. After my first year I decided to resit some GCSE’s and I did better. I then went on to University to study Nursing. However, I became very lonely and was bullied by the people I shared accommodation with and I started to stay in my room most of the time and couldn’t get out of bed. I was also self harming at the time. I ended up going to live back with my mum.

After this I started on a music course after becoming teetotal for almost a year. I struggled with the course because I was painfully shy and I couldn’t perform in front of anyone. This lead to me dropping out of the course, luckily for me I had a great art teacher at the time who took me under his wing and over the next two years, whilst I spent most of my time smoking cannabis and taking ecstasy and cocaine and drinking myself in to a stupor whenever I could, I also managed to get a merit in Foundation Art.

After that I started to get out of control, I regularly was violent to my family I would spend my day on a come down after taking drugs and write all over my bedroom walls. In the end my mum kicked me out and I stayed at a few friends houses. Then I moved to London and started on Access to Higher Education course. I made lots of friends and did really well on the course but I ended up becoming very high and staying up all night writing essays. I then moved to Soho and during this time I put myself in some really dangerous situations. I used to go out drinking on my own and end up with strangers and I’d have to figure out a way of getting rid of them before they demanded sex off of me. I finally had enough and in a moment of desperation threw my TV out the window of my flat and cut my arms open and my flat mate called the police who wrestled me to the floor and forced me go to hospital.

All of this behaviour was caused by the fact that I have bi-polar disorder, sometimes called manic depression. I have to take medication daily to keep my moods stable. I was only diagnosed once I had been sectioned under the mental health act in 2011. I sometimes feel embarrassed when I tell people because I think they might judge me as being crazy but I also want to raise awareness. I am more vulnerable I suppose but I don’t consider myself to be a danger to anyone.

I feel lucky to be me now. I’m intelligent and thoughtful and care about the people around me and the world that I live in and I’ve become a lot stronger because of the things I have been through. I also have a beautiful little boy, the best family anyone could wish for and a happy life. So I guess the moral of my tale is when faced with troubles keep on going, because there is a purpose to it all and there will always be better times.