Mental health is often overlooked by a lot of people and people often are drawn to blaming the person instead of looking at the situation people find themselves in. The past few years I've been dealing with depression, although how one classifies it depends on the situation. Undergrad is associated with a lot of stress and stress of course brings anxiety and often depression as well. It is hard for me to write and think about it because I don't think I'm completely better....even though I've realized that the best I can do is try to cope with it as best I can without letting it take over my life.
I was a fairly upbeat and relatively happy in high school but when I got to university, the stress, pressure to do well and no social life and constant paranoia about getting sick really took its toll. I wanted to go to med and realized the only way to do it is to get the best marks I could, and with the insane competition it was fairly difficult. I was never one of those people that got concepts in class and could study the day before and get a good mark, I'm one of those people that had to work my ass off to do well, and even with my best effort I realized that it still wasn't good enough and I would not be able to go to med. This is when the depression hit, because up to that point I had a set plan but after I realized that I was not smart enough no matter how hardworking things really began to fall apart. I became extremely pessimistic, became very angry and started thinking that my life is worthless and started blaming my parents for everything.....I actually started thinking of the most effective ways to ....you get the idea....
I didn't get help even though I wanted to because I was afraid that it would affect my future somehow, and didn't take any meds because I didn't want the side effects... I did manage to deal with it and have learned to deal with my mood swings a bit better so that I don't get into such a low again because it takes a long time to get up again. The low lasted probably around 2 years, and only this year have I finally woken up and accepted my career choice.
I think the biggest problem I had was that I could not steer from my original direction. I was dead set to become a doc and for me it was either become a doc or be a failure...and I realized through forums and talking with others that just because the original plan doesn't work out, doesn't mean that one is a failure. In life there are detours and nothing ever works out the way you plan it but to accept that has taken me a long time. Most people would think that I'm insane and would be happy to have the marks and to be in the program I'm in but the reality of it is I've always felt like a fraud and have never celebrated any accomplishments because I never felt they were enough, I still think a lot of it is related to luck and learning to jump through a lot of hoops and hardwork.
Today's job market is not what it used to be, and a lot of people that graduate do not get the job that they wanted and often have to start with min wage jobs, this can be very demoralizing since we have been drilled that if you work hard in Uni, you are set on getting a good job and this is often not the case. It is extremely hard to have to start at a job that requires very few skills when you know you can do so much more....these unrealistic expectations and few job opportunities are probably the root cause of the depression, anxiety and anger a lot of people feel. Is it their fault? No, but they still get blamed instead of looking at the bigger picture.
I'm still learning to cope with a lot of obstacles that are thrown in my way and it is hard, but some of the things I've learned to do is to not carry over one bad day to the next, forget about it and think of the new day as a fresh start, to listen to the radio or watch some movies to distract myself and to talk to someone like friends and family about the issue because through talking the issue no longer seems to be as bad as it seems. It's still hard, but now that I have a direction, life doesn't seem so hopeless anymore and the daily struggles seem a lot more manageable.
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