This is a written interview from a real person dealing with persistent depressive and anxiety disorder. To protect interviewees and encourage people to share their stories, Mental Aid does not share the names of interviewees except permitted to.
What are some background information you would like to share? I am an unemployed university dropout. While in university, I double majored in physics and mathematics before becoming a philosophy major. I am Asian-American and African-American.
What mental disorders or mental health challenges are you dealing with? I have been diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder along with anxiety.
What are your symptoms? I’ve dealt with bouts of depression for the past decade or so. During these bouts, I often become extremely suicidal. I also deal with the anxiety that is paralyzing.
What challenges did your mental health issues cause in school or work? I turned from a straight-A student to not being able to pass any of my classes. The longer I was in university, the more the stress kept piling onto me until I could not function in my classes anymore and would shut down on my own, skip classes, or have breakdowns and panic attacks. At work, sometimes I’d be too flustered to interact with the people I needed to in a collected manner and otherwise be neglectful with things I knew I needed to do.
What challenges did your mental health issues cause in your relationships? My challenges have caused me to distance myself from most of the people in my life. I secluded myself and stopped talking to people and hanging out with friends. I am married, and I have a strong relationship with my spouse, but outside of that, I can count the number of “friends” I have on one hand, and none of them really know the issues I face. It is not their fault because I don’t talk to them about it.
What other challenges did/do you experience due to your mental health issues? It is hard to pinpoint any one as it is so pervasive in my life. To sum it up, I feel like my life has been taken from me, and after a few of the roughest years I hope I will ever experience due to both my mental challenges and a horribly timed sequence of family, community, and world events, I’m only just now learning to accept myself and build myself back up.
Did stigma from yourself or others affect you in any way? If so, how? Honestly, I don’t think so. I definitely caused a lot of harm to myself with my self-talk, but I don’t think that was due to stigma. Others around me have almost unanimously been understanding and supportive when they did find out and the times when my mask fell, so to speak. There were a few in my life who I don’t feel like took me seriously, but even then, it was never outright stigma. I’m thankful for that because I know not everyone is so lucky to be surrounded by well-intentioned people.
What was your diagnosis timeline? I knew I had been depressed since I was a kid, and during the time when the feelings started, my depression was uniquely horrible back then. I dealt with depression throughout my life for a while afterward, but it wasn’t until things started getting really hard for me again around 2020 that I reached out for professional help. My first therapist was absolutely amazing, and through them, I learned that I was dealing with a persistent depressive disorder and had also gotten anxiety somewhere along the way.
What has your journey been like dealing with your mental health issues? As I mentioned, I felt like my life slowly fell apart. I’ve had to rethink the person I was and am constantly. Since I dropped out, I’ve had a lot of time to learn to accept myself. I’m extremely thankful to my spouse for supporting us both while also dealing with their own struggles. Even at my worst, I have had some of the best support I could ask for. As I feel like I’m finally accepting who I am again, I’m beginning to feel like it is time to rebuild myself, and I am preparing to search for a new job and hopefully start taking classes again sometime soon.
What medications or treatments are/were you on, and what are/were your experiences with them? I briefly took medication for both my depression and my anxiety. I believe they were two different subscriptions, but sadly, I don’t remember the names of them. I did not like them. In part, if I had taken them longer and given them more of a shot, they may have been more effective for me, admittedly. However, I did not trust the clinic who prescribed it to me. When I talked about my experiences with my therapist there, they did not seem to really be trying to understand me and focused on fixing the immediate problems instead of looking at the underlying issues despite how long I’ve been dealing with these things. It was a very different experience than with my first therapist, who I felt like I was making progress without using medication yet and had slowly taken months to get to know. These people gave me the medicine on my second visit or so.
What side effects do/did you experience from your medications? The medicines (or at least one of them) made me feel apathetic and like nothing mattered.
What are your coping mechanisms? I go for walks every now and then, play with my dog, and talk with my spouse. I also indulge in my creative hobbies of writing poetry and fiction and playing music on my guitar.
What advice do you have for others who are dealing with similar mental health struggles? I guess this isn’t specific to people dealing with struggles like mine, but I heard a piece of advice/ a saying a few weeks ago that I’ve still been reflecting on. It is something like, “A joy shared is a joy doubled; a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved.” There are people who really do care, who we aren’t a burden to, but they can’t do that until we are willing to open our hearts to them.
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