Discussion How did you realized you had depression/other mental illness??

[bloomingdark]

How did you realize you were depressed/suicidal/struggling with mental health illness?

 

[Trisolaris]

I felt bad for a while and then got diagnosed with depression in the age of 17.

 

[Hirokami]

When I couldn't sleep for days and I barely ate. Eventually I got diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety, and insomnia when I was 16 years old and have been on antidepressants (on-and-off) since.

 

[bad luck]

diagnosis at 18. But they only told me anxious depression. Then, in childhood, I always had some abnormal thought. He was not very sociable and cried a lot. Once I told my grandfather that I wanted to die, my grandfather told me that children could not think that. He was a good person. He loved me quite a lot. Then I do remember having thoughts of death of relatives and depressing things. I think there was already something wrong with me. Little applied boy in the studies, they called me lazy, I slept a lot and I liked to play alone. But no one seemed to appreciate anything. Difficult puberty, parental alienation, family kidnapping ... but it was so tight and quiet that I suppose no one, not even the school psychologists, could get anything out of it. Anyway. Short-term jobs, always with pills and now, since I got divorced years ago, worse. There was a psychiatrist who screwed up my life, he was a guy who paid 100 euros an hour. I change all my medication and then after one try, I think he gave me up for lost.

 

[WornOutLife]

By looking around and comparing myself to others.
The older I got, the more I realized I was not a normal human being.

Mind you! I really love being a freak and a 50% shut-in/NEET. You know, I just love gaming, anime, manga and if I'm ever 80, I'll still do it haha.

However, I wish I had a stable mind like a normal person and not this goddamn bipolar disorder full of UPS AND DOWNS.

 

[Mentalmick]

At primary school. I started to wonder why I was different from everyone else. It pretty much spread out from there.

 

[BluesRunTheGame]

At 15 I knew I was going insane and that I was in some kind of hell but I didn't know what it was. At 18 when the internet became more accessible to me (I'm a millennial who knew life before!) I found out it was OCD. Got diagnosed soon after along with depression (partly caused by it).

 

[lofticries]

Around 11 or 12 (when I accepted something was wrong with me) but really mental illness signs started showing up as early as 6. The constant crying, emotionally overeating till i was sick(nobody cared about this because I could somehow keep my weight down), obsession with dying, and fear of people should have been red flags.

 

[UseItOrLoseIt]

Diagnosis at 18. But I was always strange. My emotions were always all over the place, underlined by a constant (inborn?) sense of worthlessness. Friends were always hard to keep because of this, as I didn't see any reason why they would be friends with me, so mistrust would soon emerge and with it the mood changes.

Firstly I was diagnosed with depression, then 10 years later with BPD, which is much more suitable.

Overall, it took me a long time to accept I'm ill. And I'm not even sure I've accepted it completely. Because I was the way I am from forever, I don't know any different. In my mind it still makes perfect sense - I feel worthless because I am worthless. Right?

 

[MindFog]

When I finally accepted it. The signs were there, the comments about my mental health were heard, heck even the physical pain was felt.. But my stubbornness was too much. I've ignored it for so long.. I've ignored myself for so long.

When I was 19, choking on my own tears and accepting that I really WANT to die, made me accept that I'm not ok and I need help.

It sucks it didn't really work out...

 

[Celerity]

I was diagnosed with it and anxiety at 19. I knew I had problems before, but I didn't think about putting a label on my misery until I sought help.

 

[expiredhuman]

I remember googling "feeling like a zombie" when I was around 12-14 and a lot of information about depression came up. Ended up being professionally diagnosed a few years later

 

[KrommeVinger]

I think I have a mix of depression and anxiety and maybe a little bit of schizophrenia. I haven't been able to live a normal life for over 20 years. I can't adapt to any work, no matter how hard I try, I can't stand other people. Because of that I'm a failure professionally and financially. I can't have any romantic relationships either, and the times I tried were always a disaster. I feel I have nothing to offer this world. I feel more and more that I am heading towards suicide.

 

[nolongerhuman]

At like 14 I had to take some take-home history test and as soon as I looked at the paper I just... started bawling my eyes out. Couldn't do it. That was the first panic attack I remember. It was a little before that I started getting really sad all of the time and trying to look up ways to kill myself on the internet. Didn't want to get out of bed or do anything, hoped I would die in my sleep. Got dragged to a doctor by my mom after she first heard about it and they gave me the diagnoses

 

[Rustysoupcan]

At 12 I was cutting myself and I realized what I was doing wasn't normal

 

[Wrennie]

Since I was 18 months old. I had unknowingly contracted a form of autoimmune encephalitis called PANDAS, and doctors had zero clue what that even was back then (and of course now I'm too old to be cured of it - the developmental damage has been done).

I'd react strangely and intensely to things in the form of extreme anxiety and OCD, because my nervous system and parts of my brain were literally under attack by my immune system and the foreign bacterial invaders that triggered it.

Naturally all of the adults & mental health "professionals" in my life just dismissed me as insane and then drugged the everloving shit out of my child-self with psychiatric poisons, and the damage they ultimately did to my body & my long-term health inevitably caused me so much despair that I ended up jumping off of a building last year when under the influence of a newly prescribed medication.

 

[Life_and_Death]

When i was 10 (just before my 11th bday) my parents kicked my grandfather out of my life. My little brother had just been born and i had just met one of my cousins. I told my mother that if my brother sees me crying to just tell him i miss my cousin. And when i said it, while i dont think it occured to me i was talking about depression, there was definitely a different feel to it aside from just crying. Things then went pretty chill (aside from the abuse) for the next 3 years. Then when i got to high school (14) idk.....i just kinda snapped i guess. I have nothing that i can recall leading up to it. But i started cutting, smoking, drinking, i had to ask my mother to hide a piece of rope. Id take walks down the road to some water daring myself to jump but knowing i wouldnt.

I....dont know, but thats what happened.

(Cool i thought it was just threads but it seems individual posts are timed too)

 

[JipJopMop]

Since 13 I wanted to die, I was heavily bullied throughout school and hated. At 17 I met some one who had an anxiety disorder and I related to all of her symptoms, that is when I found out I had a mental illness but it took me time to come to terms with it

 

[Amumu]

Mostly insomnia imo. It's the clearest symptom.

 

[Symbiote]

Couldn't sleep for days, disinterest in hobbies and activities, and feeling withdrawn from a lot of things. At it's worse, I would stare at the wall for days rocking back and forth.

 

[Life_and_Death]

, I would stare at the wall for days rocking back and forth.

Not for days but i think i get that (understand) and its not a lot of fun. I remember this one time when i was younger my mother found me rocking back and forth on my bed uncontrollably and all i could say was "i want dad to come home now". I have no idea why. I dont know what triggered it. And now thinking about it, why wasnt that a clear sign to them i should get help? (Possibly didnt care although she did try to comfort me in the moment). (I also apparently sat up in bed and had a conversation with someone at the end of my bed (no one) for several minutes before laying back down, while sleeping the whole time. Maybe its a good thing i didnt get help back then. Id probably be considered demonic lmfao)

 

[Scribble Fan]

Something in me broke when I was ~16-17. I started to obsessively think about suicide and my grades dropped harshly.

 

[western_heart]

In my teens/high school. I was spending a lot of time online and my friends told me I was depressed. I was unfamiliar with the word/concept and immediately identified as depressed. I realized that I've pretty much always felt depressed, even as a child. I didn't receive a diagnosis until i was 19 (and even then, I needed ADHD treatment, not the mania-inducing antidepressants I was prescribed).

I started my 20s as a functional adult but within a few years depression started to seriously impact my life and I started therapy and more psychiatric drugs. More diagnoses, more drug induced mania, ruined career, can't live independently anymore.

 

[FuneralCry]

When I was young, I thought everybody deep down wanted to die and they were just pretending, but then I realised most people didn't think like that.

 

[Journeytoletgo]

14 was when all hell broke