Two days before my breakdown I sat in a lecture at university on Anxiety & Depression for my psychology degree.

I felt very spaced out, but remember listening to the symptoms of each disorder being rattled off by my monotonal lecturer. He spoke of how people with anxiety felt hyper-vigilant to threat & those with depression might often think others would be better off without them. He explained how long someone would need to be exhibiting symptoms for before they could be diagnosed and highlighted that symptoms would need to cause significant impairment to functioning to be classified as a disorder.

Over the months leading up to this lecture I had been expericing these exact symptoms. I was paranoid that my housemates secretly wished I died, as there lives would be better without me, and I couldn’t sleep as every night any slight noise caused me severe panic attacks. But I wasn’t able to recognise these symptoms as problematic. I sat in that lecture and vividly remember thinking ‘but everyone feels like that. I feel like that but I’m not mentally ill.’

I felt like this because I was functioning well. I was making all my lectures, didn’t miss a deadline, was exercising regularly (although now I accept this was the early stages of my anorexia) and was doing normal things with friends. I believed you couldn’t do these things and be mentally unwell, mental illness was exclusively reserved for those at the extremes, the ones who couldn’t work or leave the house or get out of bed.

I knew that everyone feels a little overwhelmed from time to time and that feeling anxious or low was part of a normal spectrum of human emotion. I firmly believed that only those who were unable to function could be diagnosed as mentally unwell.

I had never heard of high-functioning depression and anxiety. I had no idea that you could be a normal student, continuing with everyday life and still be seriously unwell.

Why is it that we accept people can have hidden physical illnesses, such as diabetes or even cancers but not a mental illness? Why do we go along with this myth that mental disorders are reserved for those in institutions or on benefits?

It was as a result of this misbelief that I delayed seeking treatment until I broke down. Until I couldn’t hide my symptoms any longer. Until I became unable to function. Perhaps if I was more aware of the different ways in which depression and anxiety could impact upon people I might have been able to recognise it worming its way into my life sooner.

I really believe we need to stop forcing people to such extremes before accepting they have a mental illness, because for so many this isn’t the case. We need to accept and acknowledge that it is possible to function whilst mentally unwell. We need to teach people that mental illness can affect the CEO of a million pound company, or the doctor treating you for the flu and not just the homeless man you walk past each morning. Because otherwise, we force people to wait until they are unable to function. And that is downright dangerous.

Lorna 

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