Help For People Suffering From Anxiety & Depression

I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety for as long as I can remember. It’s not something I have control over, it’s not something I chose. My life could be going perfect and yet I could feel like nothing right. It’s more than just feeling sad or being down. It’s not being able to get out of bed in the morning because you feel so low and empty. It’s that feeling of wanting to cry but never knowing why. You would do almost anything to stop feeling this way. Depression and anxiety is a curse and we need to do something about it.

We need to turn on the light and shine the spotlight on depression and anxiety. Depression and anxiety is very confusing. it’s wanting to be alone but not wanting to be lonely. It’s caring about everything then caring about nothing. It’s feeling everything at once then feeling paralysingly numb. You feel overwhelmingly trapped like everything’s caving in around you. You smile and laugh but deep down you still feel empty.

We can’t just let people suffer when there is a solution. When there are still things we can do to help stop the pain. when we can fix this. This is our mistake, and we need to do something about it before it gets any worse. Depression and anxiety is not a weakness, it’s a disorder, a mental illness. We need to turn on the light and step out of the darkness.

The treatment for depression and anxiety is either medication or therapy, even with both of these, it is still not 100% certain it will go away. These treatments are supposed to normalise our brain. What do you mean normalise? So we can become normal again because having an illness isn’t normal, we didn’t choose to have this and we can’t just make it go away, don’t you think if we did had the choice, the capability to not have this we would choose not to?

So don’t be one of those people who say that we are just trying to get attention or we are just overreacting that we’re just having a bad day. We are having a bad life, we are constantly at war with ourselves and that just doesn’t stop with the click of a button, it can’t and it never will.

Depression makes us overthink and it feeds our mind negative thoughts. Depression gives our brain an extra layer of thought and dought, we draw conclusions on the base of one of many elements of a situation, with little evidence, based on a single event, we constantly put ourselves down and forget the importance of positive thought and emotions, we blame ourselves for things out of our control, we blow things out of proportion.

Having a therapist or a counsellor or just anyone who will listen and care is all we need sometimes. At ICS we are privileged to have an all-day counsellor where we can go talk to her at any time. We are so lucky to be able to always have a person to speak to about your problems, someone who is just always there for you. Though sadly many schools do not have the same privilege.

One in ten young people aged 12-17 years old in Australia will self-harm, one in 13 will seriously consider a suicide attempt, and one in 40 will attempt suicide. In many circumstances perhaps this could have been avoided, if they had that person they could go to at any time and talk about how they’re feeling and that person will not just listen, but help you through anything.

It is scientifically proven that when we put our thoughts and emotions into words it helps us justify them. The process of putting these thoughts and feelings into words helps us create a sense of self-awareness which makes us feel that we know exactly what’s wrong. It gives a sense of control and power.

Imagine someone saving your life just because they listened to you. The countless people who would still be alive just because they talked to someone. This is why it should be crucial to have an all-day therapist or counsellor at all schools. This will not only decrease the risk of depression and anxiety but it will reduce the number of deaths for people our age.

You may be wondering where this money would come from. Well did you know that the Conservation Research Program pays millions annually to farmers who don’t farm parts of their land? But research shows that we are annually wasting $114.5 million dollars that could have been put to better use.

If our government put our money to better use we could have over 200 billion dollars to spare for other important needs like councillors in all schools.

Our generation is already trying to fix a lot of issues that we didn’t create but generations above us have now layed these problems in our hands wanting us to fix it. So if we can just fix one thing, at least that’s a start.