As I explained in the previous post, May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

Lots of organizations go the extra mile during this time to get the word out about how common mental illness really is – that we all know someone (or several someones) who have mental health diagnoses, even if we don’t realize it. The idea is to reduce the stigma associated with the term “mental illness” and take it for what it is: A medical condition.

Our last post, a guest post by Ashlyn Reid, dealt with teen suicide. I just happen to be intimately familiar with suicidal ideation myself, even as a teen, and thought I would take this opportunity to tell you about it.

THE VERY REAL STRUGGLES OF A DEPRESSED TEEN

My first memory of being actively suicidal was when I was fourteen. I was terribly depressed for no discernible reason and had been for a while. So I grabbed all the medications I could find in the house, poured the pills out onto the kitchen counter, and sat there staring at them, teddy bear next to me.

I cried while I pondered my options. Should I or shouldn’t I? Should I stay or should I go? Does anyone really give a shit? I don’t know how long I sat there, but in my mind, it was quite a little while. Here I was, a young and innocent 14-year-old high school freshman, struggling to decide if life was still worth living.

How sad is that?

My thoughts went to Timmy, my teddy bear, as I wondered who would take care of him if I went through with it. In the end, I put the pills back into their respective bottles and wept.

Thank you, Timmy.

I say if it takes a stuffed animal to keep you alive, then so be it. If it takes thinking about your loved ones and how they’ll miss you, or your cat or dog or ferret or snake – then so be it.

Whatever it takes.

Shortly after this incident, which I’m pretty sure I kept to myself, I tried therapy for the first time. I went to see a middle-aged male therapist upon the recommendation of a dear (much older) friend. I vaguely remember sitting in his office and describing my feelings to him.

As far as I remember, I only saw him a few times. I didn’t feel a connection with him, partly because he was a male. In fact, as I sit here 36 years later, I still only work with female therapists, ones with whom I can build a quick rapport with.

Five years later, when I was 19, I had just come home from my first year away at college, when I became actively suicidal again. Sure, I was drinking heavily as often as possible, and I was still terribly depressed. I did not do well at school that year (mostly because I was too busy drinking and skipping classes) and I was so distraught about life in general, I again had a life-and-death decision to make.

I had found a summer job at a small manufacturing place (and had quickly obtained my first fake driver’s license from a coworker) and was doing menial labor, which was fine with me. Not a lot of brain power was required for this job, and if memory serves, it was fairly easy.

One day, about three weeks into my new job, I was so depressed, I had to leave work early. I was going to kill myself.

I drove toward my mom’s house and decided the best way to do it was to smash my car to pieces. I remember sitting in the driver’s seat at a red light, just bawling my eyes out. Now, this traffic light is very important: Had it been green, I would have been able to turn right onto the entrance ramp for I-75 and crashed myself into an overpass.

It would have been a done deal.

But the damn light was red, so I had to wait, which probably saved my life.

In the moments I sat at that light, the voice of reason entered my consciousness. It told me to turn around, go to my friend LeAnn’s house, and tell her what was going on.

So I did.

She drove me to my mom and step-dad’s house and sat there, patiently waiting for them to get home from work, so she could explain what was happening to me. I was inconsolable. I was still bawling and, when my mom and Jerry came home, LeAnn explained what had happened.

They were stunned into silence. This surprised both LeAnn and myself, as my depression was so bad by this time, there really should have been no mistaking it. (Denial ran deep in my family.) It was certainly much deeper than simply teenaged angst.

My mom called the therapist I’d seen just twice since returning home from college, who told her to take me to a local hospital. Luckily, it was a good hospital with a good reputation, and it had a psychiatric ward.

This marked my first stay in a psych unit.

I stayed for 30 days, on a wing that almost exclusively treated young women with eating disorders. It was quite an experience. I still remember many of the young women I met there and how complicated their stories were.

When I saw the psychiatrist there for the last time before my discharge, he didn’t mention anything about medication. I was convinced that I needed an anti-depressant. He relented and prescribed an MAOI for me (hey, this was way back in the late 80s). These kinds of drugs have a lot of dietary restrictions, drug interactions, and side effects, and are often mentioned in information packets of drugs that are currently available for a variety of conditions: “Do not take this drug if you’ve taken an MAOI within the last 14 days,” or some such thing.

Unfortunately, and you may know this, it takes anti-depressants several weeks to reach therapeutic levels and start working. (This is still the case, more than three decades later. What the fuck is up with that??) I took my pills regularly for about a month and, after noticing absolutely no difference in my mood, stopped taking it. (*I don’t recommend that you stop taking any medication without talking to your doctor first!*)

It would be another 13 years before I went on another psych drug, even though I was depressed and suffering that whole time.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Those were the two times I was actively suicidal as a teen. It in no way explains the extent of my mental health issues or how much I struggled daily. They are just snapshots in time.

As I stated, my mom and step-dad seemed stunned and didn’t really know what to do with me. My parents had divorced during (or was it right after?) my senior year in high school, and I had a really hard time with that – that was obvious to everyone.

And my depression was just really bad throughout most of high school and into the beginning of my college career. It got a little better after I found sobriety at the age of 19, but it never completely left. Though I’ve never been diagnosed with dysthymia (that I know of), there is no doubt in my mind that I had it (and still do, in between severe depressive episodes).

For those of you who are parents, I guess the moral of this story is to pay attention to your kid’s moods. What might seem like “normal” teenage behavior could very well be a mood disorder that requires medical attention before it gets out of hand.

And, for God’s sake, talk to your kids. And listen to them. Don’t be afraid to bring up mental health issues. Ask them how they’re really doing. I can tell you that talking about depression or anxiety or suicide or any other mental health issues will not cause anything bad to happen. If anything, it can clear the air and open a very healthy dialogue.

If your kid needs help, get them help. If they just need to talk, then listen. Let them tell you what’s going on in their heads and in their hearts. Maybe that’s all they need.

If you’re a teen reading this, I suggest that you find someone you trust that you can talk to. Hopefully, you have a good enough relationship with your parents to talk to them. If not, find someone – anyone – that you know cares about you and spill the beans on yourself. There’s no harm in talking.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE SUICIDAL

Here are some resources if you feel like you can’t trust yourself:

**PLEASE CALL 9-1-1 OR GO TO AN EMERGENCY ROOM IF YOU ARE IN DANGER OF HURTING YOURSELF**

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
National Suicide Prevention Online Chat
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
NAMI Helpline: 1-800-950-NAMI (6264)
Crisis Text Line: Text NAMI to 741741

Take your mental health seriously, folks. Life is not worth living if you don’t have any hope, and I don’t want you to become a statistic.

YOUR LIFE IS MEANINGFUL. You make more of an impact on people than you realize, I truly believe that. I hope you do, too.

Thanks for letting me Keep it Real.