It’s Mental Health Awareness week and if there’s one good reason for my ‘instawankery’, it’s my commitment to normalising mental health issues and doing my bit to remove the stigma and shame surrounding treatment for those mental health issues.

When I was 26 I lost my mind. If I’m honest, when I look back over my teenage years, there were probably times when I lost my mind then too but we didn’t talk about mental health then. Even when I was 26, we didn’t really talk about it but it became unavoidably apparent that I was not ok.

My mum took me to the doctors - I cried all the way through as I answered the questions he asked. I left with a prescription for Prozac. I’ve never been more scared, more embarrassed, more ashamed and more worried about what my parents must think of me.

You see, I come from Yorkshire. They don’t suffer fools gladly in Yorkshire. It’s very much a ‘pull yourself together’ mentality. No one - and I mean NO ONE - had ever spoken about mental health in my family. When I walked into that doctor’s office, I literally had no idea that I was depressed so when he told me I was and that I needed meds to make me feel better, I was lost.

A month later, I started taking the meds. Why did I wait a month? Because I didn’t want take them. I didn’t think I needed them. The doctor had got it wrong. I wasn’t that bad, was I? Well, after a month of struggling through my teaching job, crying in the bathrooms throughout lunch, never leaving my bed when I wasn’t working…I had to admit, that maybe I wasn’t ok.

I don’t remember what it was like going onto meds for the first time, but I know what it’s been like since. I’ve been on and off anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds since I was 26 and that works for me. I go through acute phases, spend about a year - 18 months on the meds, and then wean myself off them. I recently went back on Sertraline at the end of 2020 - that was the first time in 4 years I’d been on meds - and while there was a little voice that said, “I can’t believe you’re back here,” there was also a louder, more experienced voice saying, “Good on you for taking your mental health seriously.”

Because I’ve been there. I’ve been at the deepest, darkest depths of my emotions and wondered how on earth I would every get out. I’ve thought about how I’d end it all. I’ve suffered panic attacks that made me feel like I was going to die, right there on the spot. I’ve also dealt with low level anxiety over an extended period of time that eventually led to a depressive episode. It’s all serious and it all needs to be taken seriously.

We are made to feel shame for taking meds to manage our mental health, but we wouldn’t feel the same way if the doctor told us we needed to take a pill everyday to regulate our kidney function, would we? We’d be bloody grateful for that pill.

Well, I’m here to say, I’m on Sertraline 50mg daily and I’m bloody grateful for that pill. Maybe I won’t always have to take it, maybe I will. Honestly, I don’t give a fuck. I’m just grateful that I’m not living in that dark hole and what’s more, so is my family.