May is mental health awareness month!
Let’s start with some facts from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI):
1 in 5 adults in the US experiences mental illness in any given year.
6.9% of adults in the US experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
18.1% of adults in the US experienced an anxiety disorder in the past year.
Only 41% of adults with a mental health condition received mental health services in the past year.
I personally am in the 18.1% of Americans with an anxiety disorder, and fortunately, I’m also part of the 41% receiving help for my disorder. Last month I shared about 2 of my physical illnesses (Sjogren’s & IBS) during their awareness month – read more here. This month I want to talk a bit about my journey with mental health, specifically anxiety. I wrote about some of it in my first every blog post, “Invisible Illnesses,” but I’ll expand in this post.
Ultimately, I also want to talk about the stigma that surrounds both mental health illnesses as well as taking medication for them, because this societal stigma is one of the main contributing factors to why people may not want to seek help for a mental illness, may not want to accept that they have a mental illness, or may not even know that they have a mental illness.
I’ve been dealing with mental illness for exactly 10 years now, and I’ve taken many psychology courses because I’m fascinated by the subject. I would never claim to be an expert on the subject (because everyone’s experience is different), but I want to share my experience in the hopes that it resonates with someone, helps someone feel less alone, or inspires someone else to get help.
My Anxiety Journey
I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Panic Disorder when I was 12 years old and in the 7th grade. I was feeling so off that year, but I had NO idea that it was due to anxiety until my doctor caught it. I just knew that I was exhausted all the time, crying daily, and having trouble focusing in class. I would be sitting there taking notes, and I’d start feeling hot, sweaty, and my heart would be racing. You could literally look in my notebook and see at what point during the lecture the panic attack occurred, because my handwriting would change and become almost illegible.
I was constantly escaping class to go to the bathroom just to calm myself down. I would always think I was going to faint or vomit. I thought for sure there was something physically wrong with me because I was experiencing such physical symptoms. I was a frequent flyer at my school nurse’s office, asking to lie down and/or call my mom to pick me up. Eventually, she said I couldn’t keep doing that (I think she thought I was just trying to get out of going to class).
We took the issue to my pediatrician, who tested for any physical causes, but found none. Upon further investigation, he realized what was going on during these times when I would feel faint or nauseous…they were panic attacks. And I was exhausted all the time because I was in fight-or-flight mode all. day. long.
So with the diagnosis of anxiety, we began to look for solutions. I tried seeing a therapist, but totally didn’t connect to her. And talking about my feelings wasn’t helping because my feelings weren’t causing the panic attacks, they were just coming out of seemingly nowhere. I was desperate for some peace. I wanted to be able to get through the school day without constantly feeling the need to escape. I wanted to go out and do things with my friends again. I wanted to live the normal pre-teen life.
So I went on an anti-depressant. Even back then, before I was into holistic health & wellness, I was nervous to turn to medication. The first time I took a dose, I sat at my kitchen table with the little cup of clear liquid in front of me for hours. I cried and panicked as my mom tried to get me to take it. I was afraid it was going to immediately make me feel something weird, even though I knew the effects were cumulative and it probably wouldn’t start helping for a few weeks.
After a few hours, I finally tipped it back. And then I did it over and over again, every day, and after a while, I was crying with relief. I was incredibly lucky that the first dosage of the first medication that they tried me on had worked so well. In fact, at the time I continually repeated that it had saved my life. I still remember writing an entry in my Stargirl themed journal (anyone remember Jerry Spinelli?) that I hadn’t cried that day and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a day where I didn’t cry.
The rest of middle school and high school went pretty smoothly…in the mental health department, at least. I continued to take my medication and my life pretty much returned to normal, with just a panic attack here and there. The only times I had really bad anxiety that rivaled my 7th grade days was when I was nervous about something, like getting my wisdom teeth removed or having my thyroidectomy (read that story here).
But then, at 20, I was diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome. Once again, everything in my body was feeling off, I was exhausted all the time, and my emotions were running haywire. Once again, I didn’t know the cause…except this time it was physical. However, the physical illness was exacerbating my preexisting mental illness. It was like my anxiety had laid in wait, and was rearing its ugly head once more.
During the few month period before and after my diagnosis (I’d say, September to March of 2016), I experienced the worst panic attacks of my life. Panic attacks that went beyond the rapid heartbeat and shortness of breath. Panic attacks during which I would hyperventilate, experience derealization, and my entire body would shake. During one of the worst, I just remember sitting on the edge of my parents’ bed, bent over toward the floor because I felt like I was going to vomit, shaking uncontrollably as my mom held my from the back, looking over at my parents’ dresser and having it seem fuzzy and out of focus.
At this point, I added another psychiatric medication to my docket. It was an easy decision at the time because, once again, I was desperate for relief. This was a stronger medication that the one I was already taking, and would give immediate reprieve. I was told to take it as needed for anxiety. It turned out I needed it daily. There were many days that I would wake up, take my thyroid medication (after which you have to wait an hour before eating or taking any other medications) and then finally take my anxiety pill. That hour was often the longest one of the day.
I no longer have to rely on that second medication, but it comes in handy when I have super high anxiety (like if I need to fly on a plane). However, I still rely on my trusty first anti-depressant. I’ve been on it for 10 years now, and the one time I tried to go off (about midway through that 10 years) the results weren’t pretty. So my attitude is: if its not broken, why try to fix it?
Stigma
I want to talk about 2 types of stigma – mental health stigma and medication stigma. These are somewhat separate, but intricately related.
Mental Health Stigma
Although this is gradually changing as people become more educated on mental illness (and more and more people are being diagnosed with mental illnesses), there is still a prevailing stigma in our society about those who deal with mental illnesses. People with mental illness are often deemed “crazy” and are blown off by people who believe that it’s all in their heads, or that they’re making it up.
This ignorant belief is dangerous, because it leads to a negative attitude towards the mentally ill. It implies that people with mental illness are weak and lazy for not “just trying a little harder.” It places the blame on the individual, when in reality it’s not your fault if you have a mental illness. It’s likely a result of a mixture of genetic, biological, psychological, and environmental factors.
This stigma can cause discrimination in social circles and workplace environments, where people who don’t understand mental illness may ostracize a mentally ill person. People with mental illnesses can also internalize this stigma, in which case it becomes self-stigma, and it can prevent them from seeking the help they need because they truly believe they are supposed to have control of this illness and it’s just laziness that’s keeping them from getting better.
But what if we looked at mental illness like physical illness?
If you break your leg in a skiing accident, people don’t say it’s your fault. They don’t say you’re lazy for not walking on your leg while it’s in a cast. They don’t say you’re weak for deciding to take pain killers (more on medication stigma below). And while being in a skiing accident is obviously different from developing depression, both are health conditions that arise without us doing anything to bring them on. We don’t choose them, we don’t want them, and it’s not our fault that we have them! (Unless you were doing something really dangerous and stupid while you were skiing…then it might be your fault).
Medication Stigma
Because of the stigma above leading people to believe that mental illness is all in one’s head, taking psychiatric mediations for mental illnesses is also highly stigmatized. Needing to take a medication for a mental illness can be perceived as weak, because you weren’t able to get a handle on it yourself.
Once again, what if we looked a mental illness like physical illness? I read a piece once comparing eye glasses to anti-depressants, and it really resonated with me because I use both. It went something like this:
I wear eyeglasses because I have bad long distance vision. Could I live without my glasses? Sure, I’d survive. But my quality of life would drop significantly. I wouldn’t be able to drive, because I couldn’t read the signs. I wouldn’t be able to see the board in classes or meetings. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy watching TV or going to the movies or concerts. It’s the same with anti-depressants. If I didn’t take psychiatric medication, would I survive? Yes, I would, but my quality of life would suffer. I would probably have panic attacks often, never want to go out with friends, spend a lot of time in bed, etc.
No one faults me for wearing glasses. I’m not seen as weak for using a vision aid. But some people may view me as weak for needing to take psychiatric medication. I have to take synthetic thyroid hormones because I had a total thyroidectomy, no one judges me for popping that pill. But they may judge me for popping an anti-depressant.
Mental illness is a complex topic with many facets that I could talk about forever and ever, but this is all I’ll say about it for now. I have a mental illness, but I am not my mental illness. It’s something I deal with every day, but it doesn’t define me. This also holds true for the millions of other Americans with various mental illnesses. Mental illness is not something to be ashamed of. In fact, if you deal with a mental illness, it makes you incredibly strong (even when you don’t feel strong).
I am very open with everyone on here about my physical illnesses, but I want to be really open about my mental illnesses too, because they are just as important, but far less discussed in society at large. Talking about our mental illnesses is the best way to decrease the stigma that surrounds them.
