I was 13 years old when I first had thoughts related to suicide. While my thoughts never really included calculated ways of ending my life, I remember such a profoundly overwhelming desire to be anesthetized to all of my emotions and worries. In the medical field, that kind of thinking is classified under the label of “suicidal ideation,” which is often accompanied by other diagnoses of mental illness. I have carried the diagnosis of major depressive disorder since I was 11 years old. My family noticed something was wrong well before I was actually diagnosed, and after a few years of going to therapy and not improving, I was taken to a doctor and started on medication. I have been on medication ever since that day, and I know for a fact that those seemingly insignificant prescriptions allowed the family to function again; it gave me my life back, and in doing so, it gave the life back to those in my family.
Like any chronic medical condition, major depression requires you to go to monthly follow-up appointments with physicians. It requires adjustments to doses and even changes in types of medications depending on how you are feeling and managing your symptoms. It can even require weekly therapy.
However — perhaps most importantly — it requires you to understand and acknowledge when you are having a “flare” and need help. Flares can present themselves with either increasing and ongoing sadness or feelings of worthlessness, significant irritability or tearfulness. At their worst, flares present as ongoing thoughts or plans of death or suicide, and needless to say I experienced many more flares since I was 13 years old. Many of them occurred in high school, and I even developed superimposed anorexia nervosa when I was 16. The summer after my freshman year of college the first friend I had made committed suicide, and five months later I had to call the campus police while another one of my friends confessed to plans of ending his life through fatal overdose. But it wasn’t until my senior year of college when I started thinking of death and suicide in relation to myself. I never told anyone because I was too afraid of appearing weak, hysterical, and incompetent. I was afraid of people doubting my ability to be successful.
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