- Andrew Read
A guy is walking down
the street when he falls down a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out.
A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up: “Hey you, can you help me out?”
The doctor writes a
prescription, and throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes
along and again the man shouts up: “Father, I’m down in this hole, is there any
chance you can help me out?”
The priest gets down
on his knees, says a prayer, and moves on. Then a friend walks by: “Hey Joe,
its me, can you help me to get outta this hole I’m in”. The friend jumps in the
hole and our guy says: “Are you stupid? Now we’re both stuck down here”. The
friend says: Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.”
At Student Minds, we believe its okay to talk. In fact, more than okay. This is the first time I’ve talked about my mental
health issues in a public setting, but talking to others in depth seemed to be
the only reason I got back on my feet and out of the hole, so its important to
me to encourage others to do the same.
Until February of this year, I was an undergraduate at the
University of Oxford, four months away from sitting my finals. I hadn’t
struggled with mental health issues previously, but over the preceding six
months I’d been finding it increasingly more difficult to simply be happy,
without really realising it. Shortly after Christmas, following advice from my
doctors, I found myself sat at home having walked away from my university life,
my degree and my friends. It was all very sudden.
Whilst at university, perhaps unlike many, I was quite open
and vocal about my problems, purely because I really needed my friends to help
me to be happy. However, when isolated at home, I felt so distant from
university life and associated Oxford with the cause of my depressive symptoms.
I felt I had to distance myself from the entire place. I found it incredibly
difficult to go back to the place that I thought had made me so upset; to even
think about going back and seeing my friends whilst they were all still
there. I didn’t find I could effectively
explain to people how I felt, why I didn’t want to come back to Oxford to visit
them all the time, despite the fact some of them were leaving at the end of the
year and I might never see them again. I didn’t feel like anyone really
understood how difficult it was for me, I didn’t feel like I understood, and shut
everyone out.
One of the hardest things about depression is that you can
often feel alone. It’s a very personal
battle: only you can really understand how it affects you, but that doesn’t
mean others can’t help. Whilst spending time at home by myself, I convinced
myself that everyone at university just thought I had taken the easy way out. I
didn’t think they would understand why I had to do what I had to do. It wasn’t
until I went back to university for the first time after my friends had
finished their exams, and sat down with one of my friends in a park and tried
to explain how hard it was to be back, that I began to realise that it doesn’t
necessarily matter if people don’t understand what you are going through, as that
doesn’t mean they can’t be there to help.
Very few of us understand the molecular basis of cancer, arguably
none of us can cure it, but that doesn’t mean if a friend has it we don’t want
to help support them through it. Mental illness is another illness, and although
nobody can understand what each person goes through personally, that doesn’t
mean your friends don’t want to help you through it. Talk to them.
Personally, I feel like a lot of my mental health issues
were exacerbated because I shut out my friends and didn’t feel like I could
talk to anyone about them. I suffered in silence. When you finally realise that
friends don’t have to understand the ins and outs of your struggle, that simply
spending time in the company of someone when you are feeling down, and
providing messages of support can be as effective as medication and therapy, life
can become more manageable. I began by talking to someone who I didn’t even
know about my problems as I felt like that would be easier for me.
When you feel strong enough, take a step and trust in your
friends; open up to them. When you feel even stronger, encourage someone who suffers
from similar issues to do the same. The only way to make people understand
mental health, and a very effective way of dealing with mental health issues, is
to talk.
Don’t suffer in
silence.
