Hello, I have always thought that sharing my story with the mental health community is important to bring hope to others that are just like me.

I’m a 37 year old divorced mother of two boys. I have been in therapy of some kind or another since I was 7 years old. Mental illness runs in my family as well as substance abuse addiction. I believe I was born with my many disorders that progressed and worsened as I got older, abused illegal drugs, prescribed medication and had my children. In my early childhood I showed all the many signs of OCD. I also grew up in an extremely chaotic family where my mother suffered terribly with her own mental illness that was never acknowledged or treated and an emotionally absent father. My two older siblings coped with this by using and abusing drugs and my older sister was put into rehab when I was seven. My older brother simply moved away and is still an addict today covering up his own mental health issues. My younger sister was extremely emotionally disturbed and would act out violently towards my parents but especially towards me. She would later become a drug addict for many years and thankfully entered recovery 4 ½ years ago.

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Good afternoon,

I am in need financial help and or guidance. I continue to run in to roadblocks where I am not eligible for any known assistance programs. (Therapy, medication, housing, food)

38yo Female

1. Disability : Mental Health (depression and anxiety along with adhd). 10+ year diagnoses
2. Relocated to Dallas for Finance career. Feb 2020. 13 month lease signed ($1,800/month)
3. Notice of Employer received PPP funds in April 2020.
4. I was terminated due to Coronavirus impact, yet I am receiving severance on the “payroll” schedule until End of July 2020.

As you can imagine this has been an absolute nightmare and paralyzing me emotionally, needed to get over to the next page in my life.

Is there someone I can work with to help me? I don’t know where to turn for financial help. And will destroy my credit and career if I cannot pay my rent obligations.

Thank you for the guidance. I look forward to your response and next steps.

Some say that faith and Mental Illness are like oil and water. If you have enough faith, they say, you will never have mental Illness. I have both anxiety and depression. I believe that faith can act as a guide to help you seek treatments and therapy. Let me be clear here. Whether you pray to a higher power or meditate, or do both, pick among a set of behaviors that might set your mind beyond your pain. You are valuable to this world, even when you are just standing still. My meds and therapy are gifts from God. They help me see the world with greater clarity and with less rumination over how this person or other hurt me. I am not scared about doing my job. I have earned degrees and have gone on to teach what I learned. The time is now to give up on stubbornness. How much time have you wasted? My main message is for you to seek help, especially when you exercise your faith. You are stronger than you think.

I was recently at a dinner with two friends, when we began discussing mental illness and mental health treatment.

All three of us have openly had periods of struggle with both depression and anxiety, but we all had very different takes on treatment, particularly in regards to antidepressants.

“I wouldn’t go on them,” said the first friend.

“I would go on them, but just until I feel better,” said the second.

My take was the opposite: I have been taking antidepressants on and off my entire life, and since deciding to take them consistently nearly three years ago, my life has turned around. I plan to be on them forever.

Conversations like this are not uncommon. When it comes to mental health issues, opinions are often polarized and strongly held.

I understand that antidepressants are not for everyone; many people are fortunate in not suffering from mental illness, and even many of those who do would prefer to have medication be their last resort.

For me, medication is a part of a more comprehensive treatment plan to avoid falling back into the throes of the major depression that I know always lingers beneath the surface of my delicately balanced equilibrium.

I remember what it feels like to be unwell.

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Hello, my name is Angel. I was searching for a way to advocate my mental health and the seriousness of mental illness, when NAMI caught my eye. I stumbled across this and here I am. I would say that I am recovering, but I know that my depression still lingers along. I take medication on a daily, therapy each week. I write to tell you about the blessing that was brought upon me.

In the beginning, I thought the sadness and despair would end, but it just got worse. I remember wearing a mask to hide the sadness, to hide the fear of being judged. And every time I would runaway from the problem, it would come back harder than ever. I could not understand what was going on or what was happening. All I wanted was to get out of the dark, to escape the demons that were taunting me every single day.

I have had a long, tiring journey to get where I am, about four years, to be exact. Although I am in the process of recovery, I have made an impact and immense about of progress through the years I have been under the chains of my illness. It took me a long time to understand my mental illness and realize that it was okay to have such feelings and emotions. I would regret and hate myself because I believed I did not deserve to feel this way, I constantly thought that if I wanted to be happy, I could, but I was wrong.

I was diagnosed with depression in my first to second year of high school, but as I look back, it all begun in seventh grade. I remember the first peak of my depression over me. I do not remember what happened or how it was triggered, but I suddenly felt sad all the time. My mother thought it was a phase, my family thought I was overreacting. “There is nothing to be sad about.” They said, and I agreed because there actually wasn’t anything to be sad about. I remember feeling stressed out about school because I was a perfectionist. I needed everything to be perfect, whether it was school or home, everything I did needed to be perfected, and if it wasn’t, I was be disappointed in myself, to the point where I felt worthless. So, I did what I thought was the logical thing and pushed the feelings aside… but that made things turn for the worse.

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Dear Tom Cruise: Thank you for slamming mental illness

By Allyson McAndrews, M.Ed.

“There’s no such thing as a chemical imbalance… You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.”

 –Tom Cruise

Those words have resonated in my head since the actor publically denounced actress Brooke Shields’ decision to treat post-partum depression with medication almost ten years ago. I must have watched Mr. Cruise’s interview with Matt Lauer five times, each time finding myself more and more dumbfounded. It wasn’t so much his stance on medication that shocked me. It was his tone, demeanor, and lack of willingness for a discussion of the bigger picture of mental illness, rather than a full-blown battle.

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Hi there. My name’s Briana, and I suffer from mental illness. I really hope that sharing an overview of my story will help other people to not feel so alone. Here goes:

I began therapy when I was about seven, and I’ve been in it ever since. I also take a few different medications to help ease my symptoms; in fact, I’m still trying to find the right combo of meds that works for me. I’ve officially been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and “bipolar tendencies”. My biggest struggle is with my depression, but I also suffer from really paranoid, intrusive thoughts and extreme anxiety. I’ve been hospitalized before because things have gotten bad enough where I’ve been suicidal. 

Even though that all sounds very negative, my life has not been dominated by my mental illness. I’ve been able to maintain my mental health well enough to graduate from college with two degrees. If I can do it, I sincerely believe that anyone with the willpower can too. I believe in you and your ability to overcome.