How has mental illness affected your life?

Seriously, how hard is it to get an actual diagnosis?

I have more than a strong suspicion that I'm manic-depressive, first spoke to my GP around last Octoberish and have seen countless useless people with little (more accurately, NO) outcome at all.

I wish I could have a proper diagnosis, mainly so that I can say to my parents and such 'look, I am officially not just being an arse' and get some decent help as well.

I have a key worker who often cancels appointments at the last minute and is pretty much no help at all, which is outrageous, in my opinion.

Most days it is more than fact that my life sucks. That is mental illness in my rage of the day,

Right and your reason for posting your original post in a thread that totally wasn't meant for it was what? Comfort and sharing?

My post was ENDING the argument, not looking for one.

So maybe you should ****ing bite me.

Seriously, how hard is it to get an actual diagnosis?

I have more than a strong suspicion that I'm manic-depressive, first spoke to my GP around last Octoberish and have seen countless useless people with little (more accurately, NO) outcome at all.

I wish I could have a proper diagnosis, mainly so that I can say to my parents and such 'look, I am officially not just being an arse' and get some decent help as well.

I have a key worker who often cancels appointments at the last minute and is pretty much no help at all, which is outrageous, in my opinion.

Most days it is more than fact that my life sucks. That is mental illness in my rage of the day,

tbh, I don't quite get why it matters to be officially told that you have depression. It really won't change much in your mood, and is just a label.

I had a few sessions of counselling whilst at school, then my mood never improved and went to a doctor filled out some form of silly questionnaire and was told there and then :/ But it never really changed how I felt.

tbh, I don't quite get why it matters to be officially told that you have depression. It really won't change much in your mood, and is just a label.

I had a few sessions of counselling whilst at school, then my mood never improved and went to a doctor filled out some form of silly questionnaire and was told there and then :/ But it never really changed how I felt.

For me at least, it's been the need to understand what's going on with me and the ability to convey to others that I'm very ill without giving them my life story. My uni tutor spent a year accusing me of lying about my health and only decided to do a U-turn when I produced a doctor's letter. Then he developed a huge guilt complex about how he should have believed me and acted earlier and could have probably, in part, prevented everything that happened to me in my third year.

I'm in a psychotic episode at the moment and have a lovely mental health care team but the lack of medical explanation of what's been happening to me has fed into my paranoia and voices and convinced me that my team are out to get me and think that I'm lying. I was finally able to convey this to my psychologist on Friday and having seen how much distress it's causing, she's put a note in my file to make sure I am rediagnosed the next time I see the psychiatrist

That sounds difficult. Are you hallucinating at the moment?

So I filled in a referra form to speak with a counsellor and they're getting back to me within 48 hours. Mixed opinions about this because I did it before and they call you and ask a hell of a lot of personal questions and I remember I broke down last time as soon as I hung up because I talked about things that I hadn't told anyone. But despite of all that, I know I really need the help because my self harm is getting more frequent and I don't know what to do anymore. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Does anyone else get very random racing thoughts before bed?

I'm not sure if it's even appropriate to post here, but I'll give it a go anyway, what's the worst that can happen?

I'm not even sure what I'm going through can be deemed as a mental illness and I'm not sure where to start. My parents always suffered from a turbulent relationship - lots of shouting and such which I guess at a young age isn't pleasant. But as time went on, I realised that it wasn't just shouting, there was physical abuse too. I witnessed my father hitting my mother with a belt, attempting to push her down the stairs... so many things I couldn't even go on with. Many times my mother packed a bag for the two of us and drove around all night so we wouldn't have to go home. I'd cry for hours and hours but the next day, my father would apologise and I wanted the happy family I saw "everyone else" having and I wanted that too. The police became regular fixtures in my household but I guess I always maintained that I was fine, and so everything ticked on accordingly. I never told anyone at school, as my father had an amazingly squeaky clean image (he was a police officer himself) and I just assumed that anyone I told would think I was lying. All the violence and blood and the tears carried on until I turned 17 and my mother finally had the courage to leave. At the same time, my uncle (on my dad's side) died, and due to me being "on my mother's side", I wasn't allowed to the funeral, and so, I guess, I was never allowed to grieve.

I managed to keep up with school and work but things were changing in my head. I started going through obsessive phases of panicking about where my mother was even if she was 2 or 3 minutes late from work. I'd always think she'd been in a car accident or she would never come back home for whatever reason. If I saw a car outside our house that I didn't recognise, I'd assume the person inside the car was watching us, and that something really bad would happen to me if I left the house. All these weird overwhelming feelings took over everything I did, and I became suspicious of everyone's motives... mainly irrational looking back on it all now. Feeling out of sync with all of my friends and bursting into tears at crazy times became part and parcel of daily life. Suicidal thoughts would creep in and I'd lie in bed wondering how easy it would be if life just had some sort of switch, and I could flick it to the off position. Naturally, I didn't want my friends to know so I kept going with the happy-go-lucky me that I seemed to be able to act out really well. I'm in my first year of university now and I guess the feelings of losing control are still scaring me. The feelings of loneliness and alienation seem to be growing, I think I may have been to 2 or 3 lectures this year so far and I'm not sure how I've managed to get away with only having one disciplinary meeting so far. Sleeping all day and staying awake all night just thinking seems to be much more appealing even though I want to go and learn. I get scared of myself, thinking that no one will like me or I'll say something stupid. I mean, this itself written down seems really stupid but the thoughts manifest in my brain to a degree where I just don't go in to university, I stay in my own bubble. But this gives my mind time to wander and the amount of times I've considered doing something really stupid to myself is crazy.

It was really nice to write all of that down and (hopefully) not get judged by anyone. It's a scary time for me right now as I'm away from my support network, and even then I've never really spoken to my mother at length about things as I feel that she may feel some guilt for the situation although of course, nothing was her fault. The knock on effects of whatever I'm experiencing has been massive - crazy mood swings, amazingly low self esteem... to the point where I've never had any sort of relationship as I get scared of letting men in too close and I'd probably get paranoid of their whereabouts. I always suspect everyone's lying to me even when they aren't. Whatever this is is just taking over everything I do and I have no idea what's going on or who to turn to. So... how it's affecting me? I'm not sure because I know at some point previously I was a happy carefree child. But all this has been going on for so long that I don't quite know what to do or who to turn to. Or... what's even wrong with me... It's just frightening.

Talking about these kinda things is always difficult but if it will help you get the support you sound like you need, then it's worth doing

I've suffered from pretty severe OCD for five years now; it crushed myself confidence and made me a pretty messed up individual.

Only now am I kind of coming to terms with the fact that I really do need help (taken long enough)..and I'm so tired of having to pretend everything's okay- I daren't moan about it incase I annoy people.

My parents still don't know but I hate to admit I can't help but feel ashamed and embarassed even though I know I shouldn't.

Anyway, I'm interested in how people handle it whether it's yourself or someone you know.

I think that there should be more of an emphasis on recognising mental illnesses because in my experience nobody really talks about them because they're kind of invisible if you get what I mean and my parents have often just labelled me as a 'hormonal' teenager :/

I've suffered from pretty severe OCD for five years now; it crushed myself confidence and made me a pretty messed up individual.

Only now am I kind of coming to terms with the fact that I really do need help (taken long enough)..and I'm so tired of having to pretend everything's okay- I daren't moan about it incase I annoy people.

My parents still don't know but I hate to admit I can't help but feel ashamed and embarassed even though I know I shouldn't.

Anyway, I'm interested in how people handle it whether it's yourself or someone you know.

I think that there should be more of an emphasis on recognising mental illnesses because in my experience nobody really talks about them because they're kind of invisible if you get what I mean and my parents have often just labelled me as a 'hormonal' teenager :/

I've suffered from pretty severe OCD for five years now; it crushed myself confidence and made me a pretty messed up individual.

Only now am I kind of coming to terms with the fact that I really do need help (taken long enough)..and I'm so tired of having to pretend everything's okay- I daren't moan about it incase I annoy people.

My parents still don't know but I hate to admit I can't help but feel ashamed and embarassed even though I know I shouldn't.

Anyway, I'm interested in how people handle it whether it's yourself or someone you know.

I think that there should be more of an emphasis on recognising mental illnesses because in my experience nobody really talks about them because they're kind of invisible if you get what I mean and my parents have often just labelled me as a 'hormonal' teenager :/

I would actually argue that there is no such thing as mental illnesses, in the sense it is an "illness". Rather, some peoples behaviour is different to the "social norms" and people are stigmitized because of this. I used to think i suffered from depression and aniexity, and gradually overtime learnt to realise it wasn't a illness and that I could just not be depressed or anxious all the time from changing my behaviour. I personally would never take any drugs for mental "illnesses", because it is not an illness and i wouldn't want to take poisonous and addictive substances in order to be "normal". Drugs dont treat the "disorder", but rather masks the supposed symptoms which doesn't work and has terrible side effects.