How has mental illness affected your life?

Thank you. I feel like I'm getting my life back on track, albeit slowly. Luckily, my closest friends are very understanding of what went on, and what still goes on. Well done on your friend for leaving that guy, and I sincerely hope things continue to go well for her. Thank you again for your kind words.

When I was younger I was diagnosed with Asperger Tendencies, which meant I had poor confidence. Add that to my weight issues then, and I had very few friends growing up. Now I'm at secondary school though, that seems to have resolved itself to an extent, but the poor confidence (and bad looks) has remained in that I have never even been kissed by a girl or had any interest shown in me. I'm 17.

I had a major operation in Jan last year and went on to develop depression... after 12 months I eventually went to the doctor and he gave me anti-depressants. As an aside, has anyone ever tried citalopram? Because that's what I'm on, and I'm wondering when they're going to kick in.

Suffered from OCD/Anxiety from around the age of 18. It was the idea that I'd lost myself, that I was never going to be 'myself' again. Being ashamed of everything about myself, from body image to intelligence to likeability. Constantly assessing myself on these completely ridiculous standards, that while aren't wholly unobtainable are definitely far too much for one person to go through so much torment for.

I had those awful 'impulsive thoughts' that would just never let go, the constant evaluation of whether I was mentally ill. That whether a song really had a certain noise in it or I'd manifested it out of nowhere. I'd feel lost a lot, like the last 4 seconds hadn't happened and a fair bit of deja vu. Going to sleep was always the worst, just complete despair that I had to face myself.

I never wanted conflict or to accept something might be wrong, so I just hid it. I used to sit up at night assuming I was going to die and feeling so profoundly sad or that everything was an indication of mental illness. However, through not talking about these things I never could never gauge them significantly enough. I was just sitting there in a bar one day with my sister and she mentioned the words 'panic attack'.

At this point in time I was going through a hard time when I was scared people would find me dumb if I didn't know everything. So I'd spend a lot of time just reading books, memorising country capitals and all the like. So the idea of not knowing a panic attack was upsetting, so I asked her what it was (and felt very embarrassed asking) and she described everything I felt from the derealisation to constant dread and I'll never forget the significant weight that was lifted from my shoulders. I felt intense happiness, almost on the verge of tears and then I had a panic attack again. It was horrible but she spoke to me it throughout and just reassured me everything would be ok, that everything was just fine.

She told my parents and they admitted my whole family had it but I never had the indication of it at a young age. I still suffered heavily from intrusive thoughts and assumed it was some drug use that had forced me into breaking out of normality. So I felt ashamed that I'd ruined my life from experimenting lightly with drugs, the whole idea of being free just didn't apply to me. I felt very detached and very self aware and very destructive, not physically but that I was never going to be happy, that I'd never be able to talk to girls, that I'd never be able to be smart and that I could never achieve anything and that I was leading myself down a road of poignant sadness. I'd be on the internet googling everything I could, just for an answer, kept on telling my parents everything was fine, that I was intensely happy. I must stress that during this whole time I had a secure group of best friends, wasn't doing terribly at school and everything at home was perfectly content. Therefore, the issue was with myself.

Then one day I just broke down into tears after I got so worked up that something I was given may have been spiked but it was all classic panic attack and I was looking for the most ridiculous answers, which as everyone who suffers it knows are so irrational in your head and completely crazy. I called my Mum up and just spoke for hours and hours about everything possible. She just told me to 'do things you wouldn't usually do' in concern to morals/ethics. As I was heavily against one night stands, treating a woman as anything but a Goddess, causing conflict and not being nice of 100% of the time. Just all these rules I had to live with, and I was told to disrespect them and I did when in an argument I was clearly in the right, I stood up and defended myself and won. I didn't feel ashamed or upset that I hadn't been nice to him, I just felt normal.

The next day he apologised for it and I started to really understand that I lived this life of such high perfection that I couldn't accept failure (which I was experiencing a lot but I tried to block it out). Then I decided to go on a year aboard to stop all this constant worrying that things will happen, I stopped worrying about what people thought of me and I laughed smugly when I worried that I might jump of a bridge, or hurt someone.

It all seemed so pathetic that I'd abided by these rules, these constant compulsions and the dread really just started to wind down and I started to feel so confident. I didn't have to look in a mirror every hour to assess how I looked, I didn't force myself to try and learn Italian and I didn't think of myself as a bad person. I spoke regularly to my parents about their experiences and they were so much worse than mine, my Mum's story was still very similar to mine and I looked at her, this respectable woman of such grand intelligence and benignity, but also of control and I tried to think of how someone with that back-story can be so successful and I just felt assured for once in life, that everything will be alright.

However, certain things still trigger it in a way that I at least ponder it and for those who suffer from it probably already know these, but once I started to eliminate them, things calmed down a lot.

-Drinking a lot is probably number one on my list. A high proportion of worrying/panic attacks have been after a heavy few days or a particularly nasty hangover. It's hard at university, when you're trying to fit in and be social but really keep it in check.

-Smoking weed/cigarettes, you ask most people of their reaction to weed and you really hit a grey spot. Sure it's relaxing and funny sometimes, but it amplifies how you feel, so if you're paranoid about anything, weed is definitely not the way to alleviate it. I smoke cigarettes also, and whenever I get panicky now, I just can't smoke, it's too foreign and weird to really help stress, all it does is make your mind more active temporarily, same goes with caffeine.

Do something you really want to, but are so afraid of. For me, it was definitely with girls. I was lucky however on my choice to go aboard. People love English accents and I knew I could at least talk to a girl and hold her attention with the curiosity of my accent. I felt so comfortable after a month or two that it didn't really ever enter my head that it wouldn't work outside Belgium (where I was). I went back to my home university with all my friends who were so great with girls, and I just did what I did with Belgian girls, just was myself, confident and unworried. I got all these compliments of being really comfortable to talk to, being stable and from my friends I hadn't seen in a while of 'transforming into a man within a few months'. I didn't really dwell on these things, it just felt normal to me by this point, a far cry from the social awkwardness with girls that had driven them away and sometimes annoyed my friends. It's just one less thing to be down on yourself about really.

-Knowledge is power, but an unhealthy obsession with reading all these details on the internet definitely isn't the answer. Of course I know it's impossible to tell people to stop doing this, but at least realise that you wouldn't let a person on the street evaluate you, so why let the internet.

-Trying too hard. I did very badly in a series of exams because I was completely obsessed with learning every detail, that nothing really ever got done. I used to lose potential friends by being so clingy and lose potential girlfriends by being so overly the top nice, people worry about these things.

-Realise you've always been yourself and nothing can ever change that. For an example, I remember so clearly about the summer before year 6 in primary school. I'd bought the new Eminem album and loved it, the music, the attitude, everything. But I was so scared to go to school because I thought I'd just compulsively swear and get expelled and destroy my life. This happened at the age of 10 or something, OCD/Anxiety never manifested till much later, but if I thought that way when I was 10 and a decade on I'm still fine in terms of mental health and not being homeless, then nothing has changed at all, just my perception of what it truly means to be happy. It's not being smart or beautiful or socially desirable, it's about being yourself. And on that cliche, I wish you all luck. = )

I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia at the age of 12; it had a tremendous impact on everything I did and ever would do. I couldn't go to school and I didn't have any friends (understandable tbh). Anyway, I've never had a mental illness, so my thoughts go out to those of you who have

Hang on, I don't understand - you said you had schizo but then you say you have never had a mental illness?!

I'm confused!

it was a joke; schizo= dual personality

Errrr Schizophrenia has nothing to do with dual personalities . That's Multiple Personality Disorder. Paranoid schizophrenia, the most common form of the condition, involves paranoid delusions and hallucinations as well as a number of negative symptoms such as a lack of emotion. Dual personalities has nothing to do with it.

It makes me repeatedly post on threads like this.