Woman Illustrates Her Struggle with Mental Illness By Using Her Prescription Meds

via YouTube

Only one out of every three people with mental illness seek out any form of treatment. For those that do embark on the journey to overcome mental illness, it’s rarely a simple path. The video below follows a woman’s seven-year fight to find the course of treatment that finally brought her happiness. Her anxiety started when she was just 17 with a panic attack on an airplane, and her condition rapidly worsened. First, she had to confront the stigma associated with mental illness in order to find any hope for getting better.

Once she decided to get help, she was given a diagnosis by her psychiatrist, but that was only the beginning. “I thought getting a diagnosis was going to come with a fix,” she said. “But I didn’t feel fixed. I tried to fix everything externally to fix an internal problem.” This lead to an arduous struggle to find the right medications, confounded by the stresses that come with being a twenty-something. Finally, she found happiness after “Seven years time, seven psychiatrists, four psychologists, countless therapists, two misdiagnoses, and over 20 medications.” In the end, she learns that “Finding the medications that work is a journey. Everyone’s journey is going to be different, our chemicals are different, we are different.” But the one most important thing she needed on her journey to fight mental illness wasn’t a pill or a doctor, but the strength to keep trying no matter what got in her way.