In January of 2010, my final semester of university began. I marked the first month by attending a concert I won’t soon forget.

I’d been listening to Tegan and Sara since my first year of university, when a friend recommended them to me because of their raw, emotional lyrics.

That’s me, you see. Raw and emotional.

Since I was young I’ve always tried to live life to the fullest. I’ve analyzed every moment and felt the entire spectrum of emotions. My father has always said I “fire with all pistons.”

But I never knew the personal quality that gave me so many great opportunities, could turn into an incurable illness that physically made me sick.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the amazing music that exuded from the two pixie-like twin sisters who make up the band, that caused me to remember the concert so vividly. It wasn’t the lyrics either; the ones that felt like they were being sung straight to me, the same  lyrics I had called upon during the ups and downs of my past four university years.

I remember the concert because I was really sick. Before then, I didn’t know how sick I was. But when I realized I was unable to stand for more than one song, and I wasn’t experiencing the usual uplifting emotions I got from my favourite band, I knew something was really wrong. I shouldn’t have been so sad.

“And don’t be so hard on yourself,” the twins sang, “It won’t get better ’till you’re worse.”

***

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), someone in the world commits suicide every 40 seconds. In Canada, for people between the ages of 10 and 24, suicide is the second leading cause of death. The WHO says 90 per cent of all suicides are committed by someone with a diagnosable pyschiatric illness.

Major depression accounts for 15 per cent of those deaths.

One week before the Tegan and Sara concert, I had a hysterical episode that came completely out of the blue. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I had just returned from church. The prayers of that mass had been directed toward people with depression and anxiety, and I felt this was a nice coincidence because they were both things I had been fighting – undiagnosed and unmedicated – since my first year of university.

That day I wanted to escape. Instead, I made my way to Outpatients at the Fredericton hospital where a nurse asked me what was wrong.

I told her that all I knew was I shouldn’t be feeling like this and I was leaving myself in the hands of doctors to decide.

She said I had done the right thing.

After hours of waiting in a small room, and telling my story a million times, a doctor finally told me that she was going to put me on an anti-depressant drug called Paxil.

***

For one week I threw up, felt tired, and could hardly stand up. I went to the Tegan and Sara concert, despite having to run to the bathroom in between songs. And five days later I walked to the hospital again, this time in the middle of a snowstorm.

I was petrified of the feelings I was experiencing. I felt like laying down in the snow banks on the side of the road and having the snow cover me.

Good thing I live in an apartment building beside the hospital.

I ended up spending three weeks of my final semester of university in the psychiatric unit of that hospital. I could see my apartment out my room window. But I was locked in a unit, unable to use my own phone, and couldn’t see my boyfriend until 4 p.m.

There was a  pyschiatrist, occupational therapists, and social workers assigned to my case.

They took me off Paxil, saying it had caused suicidal thoughts. They put me on nine new pills a day.

I was confused and wanted to know: Why did this happen to me?

***

My mother came to stay with me the moment I got out of the hospital. I still remember hearing her heels click as she walked down the hall to my room. I knew it was her. Four years of university and six hours of driving distance between my parents and I may seem like a lot, but it can never take the space of a mother’s love.

And her concern for her sick daughter.

“We’d been in communication with you in Fredericton and me in Halifax for weeks and days before when you were having a lot of issues and crises and were very upset, and it was a very upsetting situation for me because I didn’t know what to do or how to advise you.  Or how to judge the situation. So when you were brave enough to walk up to the hospital and tell them what your situation was - I thought, I’m not there, and that’s where she should be – with professionals who can really assess and determine what she needs,” Mom explained during her visit.

She said she was proud of me for admitting I had an illness and going to the hospital.

“It was a big relief, I wasn’t upset that you had been hospitalized, but I was grateful,” she said.

Mom said she was slightly surprised that things escalated very quickly. From the point of view of a mother with two daughters, it is normal for young female students to go through a lot of stress and emotional ups and downs.

Her opinion has changed now.

“Looking back I can think of times when you did have a lot of stress and I guess I thought it was normal issues that young women go through,” she said. “Now that they’ve identified the illness, I can kind of look back at times when things probably contributed to it and when it started developing.”

Growing up, my mother said she never would have guessed her youngest daughter could develop depression.

“People always remembered Molly: Molly was silly and Molly was smart. That is what Molly is to me,” Mom said, trying to explain how I had changed during university.

“It is a big difference, when you were young people remembered you, no one ever forgot Molly. I would be involved or participating in something and no one would remember me. You were such the opposite of that, whatever you did they remembered you.”

I knew that I could find very good clues as to why I had depression from taking an inside look at my family history. So I asked Mom if she knew of any mental illness in our family.

“The hard part of answering that question is to determine what family illness is. You might look at someone and say they don’t, and another person might say that is mental illness. So there are issues in our family of people that have been on medication for years and years. We have issues with people that have had different t ypes of problems, problems in functioning normally. There’s been issues on both sides of our family with addictions. And there are probably people, including your own parents, that have had problems dealing with situations at different times in their lives. So I guess there is mental illness in our family as well as probably most other families.”

Before she left to go home, Mom said she hoped I would be feeling better, and that although I was graduating from university, my stay in the hospital had caused her to hold on to the urge to look over me as a concerned parent.

“That’s the part that I’m going to have to figure out. You are an adult, but you are my child, so no matter how old you get I will be worried about you and concerned for you,” she said.

***

UNB Counselling is a free service provided to students at St. Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick. Last September, I was referred there to start some counselling, but was shocked to discover that there were no available counsellors because the office was overflowing with requests.

In January, UNB Counselling took on some interns, and I got a call that an adult student taking his Master’s in Counselling wanted to take on my case. I was pleased, because even though I hadn’t yet been admitted to the hospital, I had heard that therapy was a great stress reliever.

I only had one appointment with Kevin Culberson before my stay at the hospital.

After being discharged, I asked my counselor about my mental illness, and he gave me some clues as to why the UNB service is in such high demand.

“Depression is one of the primary issues. There is a list of what gets presented by clients, and relationships, anxiety, and depression are the three primary ones,” he explained.

“I believe it has some correlation to the questions they’re facing in their development. Who am I? What is my purpose in life? They are just trying to sort those through. Tack on experiences they are encountering and past experiences, they are all interrelated.”

He also helped me learn why having depression and anxiety weren’t my fault, and were in fact very common in young women my age.

Kevin will finish his internship at UNB Counselling at the end of April, and says he has learned a lot from his student clients.

“I would say number one, depression is a very common thread. Number two, there is a lot of stigma attached to talking about depression. Number three, in terms of clients I have talked to, I am deeply aware of a great courage by reaching out to find someone to listen and to talk with. And number four, from a counselor’s perspective, creating a safe, trusting relationship is the foundation for people to be able to share the feelings they are dealing with.”

Kevin wanted me to know he was proud I had battled through stigma, which is the shame or disgrace that people living with mental health can sometimes feel from society who think depression is no different than regular sadness.

“It’s not a new story. It’s a story that has been unfolding and the depressive symptoms are becoming more apparent,” he said. “Everyone experiences sad feelings. Depression is more chronic because sadness becomes prolonged over a period of time, and it is exacerbated by negative thoughts which promotes negative feelings.”

***

In the hallway outside of the pyschiatric unit at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton, there hangs a poster of a pretty, young girl with blonde hair. The poster says: I am a student. I am a writer. I have a mental illness.

Those are my truths, too. I have a mental illness, and my words are my gift so I can share my story with you.

Now I know, because of what I went through in 2010, that that label is no more my fault than any of the others. I have clues for why I developed depression, but in the end it doesn’t much matter.

***

My mother Carolyn Keilty-Cormier came to visit me when I was released from the hospital.

She helped me understand that my illness wasn’t my fault, and that I was going to get better because I had a support network helping me.

 

Click play to listen.