How has mental illness affected your life?

I had undiagnosed depression for nearly 3 years til last May when I plucked up the courage to go to the Docs.
I'm now on medication and have been since May. I changed to Venlafaxine a few months back and I can honestly say life is now looking up. For the first time in 4 years I'm excited about the future, and I realise now Depression is an obstacle in life that yes, I may have to still face for a while, but now I'm more stable and on a good medication.
Also, I have offers from University, which would not have happened if I had not been to the Docs.

I'm so glad I went now, and I'm looking forward to hopefully going to Uni in September

A bit of positivity from my end: had a quite serious psychotic episode and had to take time off work. I summoned up the courage to tell the colleagues in my department that I have mental health issues and got lots of very supportive messages and was told to take all the time I need off from work. When my boss comes back from America, I'm going to ring her and see whether we can find a way of slowly reintegrating me back into work

Youre all idiots, don't take yourself so seriously.i used to have horrific ocd and never thought I would be normal but I am so screw you ocd. Trust me be strong ppl you can win.

Congrats to both of you! It's so nice to see some good news, in place of everyone suffering and feeling like ****.

Thankyou
It's been bloody hard though, but I guess in life people have to go through hard times to find the good times!

You should be proud of yourself. It can be hard to face up to needing help especially for this sort of thing and you managed it. Not only that, but you seem to have really turned your life around.

Thanks for that. Everyone in this thread now all cured.

Surely the fact that I never thought I would be normal again and actually am fine now proves it was nothing to worry about.

Youre all idiots, don't take yourself so seriously.i used to have horrific ocd and never thought I would be normal but I am so screw you ocd. Trust me be strong ppl you can win.

I'm sorry but the way I see 'social' would be people self harming in groups. It's a solitary thing therefore it isn't social. The methods aren't limited. There are hundreds of different ways to self harm. And I don't tell people about it because it is influenced by society. I tell certain people because I trust them and they care about me and they help.

There's a social aspect to self-harming. Fact..

Think of it like this - If, since before you were born, people were dealing with depression by going for a mile long jog instead. Imagine this was the norm, and noone knew of, or had ever 'self harmed' either physically, or mentally. Imagine that every time someone was going to self-harm in any way whatsoever - said self-harming was replaced with a mile long jog. Ever since before you were born. So now, when you feel depressed, would you self harm? No, because it'd never been done before and you had never heard of it and so would never even consider it. By that, we can deduce that self harming is in fact, a societal influence. For example, if you were aware that a family member had been 'hearing voices', you'd want to 'help' that person, by seeking medical attention, and in turn hope that these voices would soon stop. But in a completely different cultural setting, such as one in an African tribe (no racism intended - just an example), hearing voices would be seen as a positive thing. The person hearing the voices would be seen to have some kind of 'gift' and would looked up to, rather than looked down upon by his/her society.

That's what I mean by 'social', which I'm sure you already knew, but just wanted to be immature about it. But if you really did think that 'social' just means doing thing in groups, then I'd say depression is the least of your problems (in the society in which I assume you live - a western and first world one).

There's a social aspect to self-harming. Fact..

People don't self harm because that's how others deal with it. Do you really think that people think, 'Oh I have depression. What to do? Oh I know, I'll self harm because that's what everyone else does.' People self harm because they feel release from doing it. They feel it's easier to focus on the physical pain of self harming compared to whatever thoughts they have in their minds. Not everyone with depression self harms. Cultural differences have nothing to do with self harming. Yes it does with the approach to those hearing voices, but that is irrelevant to the reasons for self harm.

To a certain extent, I agree with both of your arguments. Obviously people feel that there's a release from harming themselves and that is how they cope with their stability/their impacted life.

However, I think culture has some sort of influence, even if people are not aware of it. It's kind of like alcoholism - people abuse alcohol as a way of releasing their anxienties or they're generally depressed and becomes a vicious circle. The same applies to smoking and drugs.

The main point I think that this guy is trying to make is that people are surrounded by the knowledge that people do self harm and they find this is a way of dealing with their stresses or are in crappy situations. This could lead people into the way of thinking that self harming is a way of dealing with their problems.

You hear about depression a lot more in today's society than you have probably in later years. I don't know whether it is because people kept things hidden behind closed doors and this has always been the case, but there's definitely an increase in self harming - even some of my friends have done this, so maybe this is subconciously affecting the thoughts that people have with dealing with feelings too hard to deal with. Interesting topic.

I do understand where you're coming from, as self harm has been adopted by various groups in recent times. The point I'm trying to make is that with alcohol, drugs and smoking there is a definite element of social influence in it. Most people start these things with others and this then can develop into negative behaviour for whatever reason. But with self harm, it's something a lot of people don't share with others. Whereas alcohol, drugs and smoking are promoted by many, self harm is looked down on by most in our society. If it is a behaviour looked down on, it's less likely that people will do it because of cultural influence; I know I've grown up with people saying self harm is stupid, ridiculous, attention seeking etc. That's not something people would wish to be classed as by others. Yes we know that others self harm, but this is rarely portrayed in a positive light and so it's not logical that it would be replicated, unless someone was desperate for help or release.

I think it is an interesting topic, and I'm not really arguing that there is no social influence whatsoever but I feel that Unoriginal- made his point rather insensitively in his first post. He said it's not a mental illness (which it isn't, it's a coping mechanism) but to suggest it is wholly social with no psychological influence is going too far I think.