Depressed on year abroad

Basically I'm in my third year of a languages degree at Glasgow Uni which I'm spending abroad as a mandatory part of the degree, as a languages assistant in a small town in the south of Spain. I've been here out for nearly two weeks now, and I just started working yesterday. I always knew the year abroad was something I would have to do but for a long time I was able to put it out of sight and mind so to speak.

Basically, now that I'm here, I think I've made the wrong choice. Obviously it's very different to what I'm used to, and I'm missing home immensely. I know homesickness is natural but I also feel like my anxiety is causing me to find this extra harder to deal with. I've always had problems with anxiety and dealing with stress, I always think that the worst possible outcome will happen, I've never felt so low as to have to get help for my mental health (even though it has at times been really bad, in high school I experienced suicidal ideation a few times but I never talked about it with any professional because I always felt scared of doing so) and over the past year and a half it's been relatively good too. However I feel like being out of my comfort zone is just exacerbating my precarious mental health and is making me feel worse than I ever have in a long time. I feel lethargic all the time, I can't motivate myself to do anything, my stomach feels queasy, I have no appetite and then I feel ill because I don't eat that much (although I am trying my best to eat as much as I can) and whenever I phone my parents to talk to I always end up crying. I just miss everything back home so much, my family, my boyfriend, my pets, my friends, even the classes at uni. I just feel like I've made the wrong choice coming out here and I don't know how I'm going to manage 8 months isolated from everything. The town I live in is very small, there's not a lot to do, I haven't made friends my own age, I have massive internal problems with social anxiety so I find socialising difficult anyway, and I just feel very isolated and down.

I realise this is still true start of my year abroad and I don't want to throw the towel in just yet but I'm seriously considering asking if I can come back home after Christmas having spent three months out here. I know myself and I know that my mental health will just deteriorate if I have to do it for another five months, when I think about coming home for Christmas all I can think of is having to go back to Spain afterwards, I can't even feel happy about it. My mum is getting irate with me when I try to discuss this with her and I'm worried that'll make it worse too because I just feel worse after talking about it with her.

Obviously however the problem is that this is a mandatory part of my degree but I'm already feeling so down that I've considered dropping out, or starting again and changing my course. Other people I've spoken to doing the same course agree that I should wait until Xmas and then contact the uni. I know this is about building resilience but do I really want to risk it if I still feel this down in a month or two and then have to spend another 5 months out here on my own? The endless possibilities really stress me out.

If anyone has been in a similar situation or can offer me any advice, then I would really appreciate it. Glasgow Uni seems to be quite good with mental health (I know one friend who pulled out like 2/3 of the way through second year, they just let her resit the whole year) but I'm still anxious to ask. I would really just like to put my mental health first, but like I say, this whole situation is just causing me so much anxiety.

Thanks in advance and please be kind in the comments

Hiya

First of all, I think two weeks is not very long. You could give it a little more time to settle in? Particularly since you've only just started working.

I would strongly advise you to get medical support. Doesn't matter how big or small, you deserve support with your mental health so please take it. If you university were aware of this they could have had a support plan in place since you definitely won't be the first study abroad student facing these difficulties. This FAQ should give you a lot of information you may be after based on the what-if kind of questions. But please please, keep a dialogue with professionals who know the best ways to help you.

The other thing I would disagree on, although I know exactly what you mean, is "I know myself". All of our perceptions have been influenced by external forces, including our perceptions of ourselves. Nobody has an objective view of a person, so don't try to. Accept that there are things about yourself that you don't know, and may never know, and that's absolutely fine to not know these things.

If you want any more advice, just let me know. I'm not an expert but I have non-judgemental opinions (outside of the debate sections anyway)

Hey! Yeah, I've went from "I want to come home now" to "I'm willing to stick this out to Christmas and see how I feel" which I think is good, and I realise that it's still early days, but I think I should make my uni aware of this before too long in in case I can finish early. Whenever I've had stress before since starting uni (except for most of my first semester) I've been able to manage it well enough without being a detriment to myself. Like my bf left to study abroad in August for a semester and while I obvs miss him a lot, until I left myself a month later I was handling it well - and then as soon as I came out here and realised he would get to stay in Scotland after Xmas while I would have to go back to Spain for another five months, it just seemed like the worst thing in the world, and now I'm missing everything else from my friends to even the food (I'm vegan and I am doing my best to eat as much as I can but I've not been able to get mock meats etc anywhere and the lack of variety in my food is getting me down too).

I just feel really isolated and alone out here and that's how I felt for a lot of my school career too, and I can remember how bad that got at certain points and I really want to avoid going to that place again. I just think it would be good to message my uni sooner rather than later (but obviously only after a month, even I admit that messaging them after two days of work is a bit silly) so they're aware. It's really stressing me too because my degree is two languages and I only have to spend three months minimum in France in fourth year (which I could do fine, no problem) whereas I'm going to be in Spain for 8 months? In my head it's just such a long and daunting time and I'm not good with the stress it's causing me thinking about it

I'm fairly certain that while you're abroad your university still has a duty of care to look after you, including helping with MH. So please tell them about it, even in Glasgow, they can still help you in Spain.

Getting the right food comes with time. I don't have a kitchen right now because flatmates got excited with the grill and the oven set on fire, so my diet is out of the window too.

You're in a foreign country, isolated and alone are the natural emotions to feel.

Message your uni once you've read this. Tell them that you're having mental health difficulties and that you're struggling a bit, and that some kind of pastoral support would be nice. You can then explain once a more informal dialogue is set up, what your thoughts are on moving.

I have a friend at glasgow who dropped out like 2/3 through second year because of bad mental health and they let her resit the year this year no problem so I hope they'll be as understanding with me if my mental health persists in getting worse. Like I obvs don't want to be sad, I want to enjoy myself, but I'm just finding it so difficult.

I'm sorry about your kitchen! I only have a cooker so everything I eat is fried and I just feel like that's quite unhealthy, I mean it is rice and pasta with different vegetables and tofu etc but I would like an oven so I could roast some veg etc. I know I could buy a portable one but again that seems like a lot of faffing about when I may not even be out here for that long yet in case I do get to come home.

Do you not think I should wait a bit longer before messaging them? Like if I do begin to feel better then great but i don't want to make them question me unnecessarily, I feel like if I message them after my second day of work they may not take me seriously in the future if my health does get worse.

So in terms of MH support, Glasgow seems respectable then (some are diabolical).

Don't worry about my kitchen, but thanks for your concern.

I think you should tell them now that you are having MH difficulties and are struggling to adapt. That is not the same as telling them you want to come home. It's better that they are aware of the situation now so that they can put things in place to support you than to allow the situation to escalate and possibly get messy.

Yeah that is true hopefully! Let's hope if it comes to that they can actually help me.

You do have a valid point, I may only wait a week or two of working instead of until the end of the month. I may message them as early as the 20th because by then I'll have been out here for a month roughly and I'll have at least three weeks work under my belt so I'll probably have more consistent emotions, whether that be positive or negative. Even if I were able to like, take a year out and split up my work during that, I think it would help me a lot - just having to do 8 months in a solid block is really daunting