Jennifer is interviewed by Sarah and Candace, Nursing Students completing their placements at mindyourmind. Interview has been slightly edited and modified. Full version is available in audio.

Getting diagnosed with mental illness

mym: How did you learn you had a mental illness?

Jennifer: I kinda diagnosed myself, I always knew something was wrong, a lot of sleeping, excessive crying, eating more, loss of energy, something for me just didn’t fit who I was. The person that had left high school wasn’t the same one who had entered university. So I consulted my mom who is a nurse and I was so afraid to tell her. I thought this is just the end she’s just going to completely walk away.

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I was able to get in to see my family doctor. He said it’s just an acute case of depression, prescribed Prozac and said I’d really benefit to get into counselling, basically because of the stress of first year engineering, was his strong belief that that’s kinda what targeted and brought this on. So he suggested counselling and so I got into counselling and then things got worse from there and they never really seemed to get any better.

So I tried multi anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills and sleeping pills and nothing seemed to work.

Then I went home for Christmas, this would’ve been 3 yrs ago today. And it’s like the depression just went away, I just lifted up off the ground and everything felt great. I had never felt better before in my life. I can’t remember when I had felt that good, I had lists of things to do, they were all done, all of my assignments were ready to go for next semester.

Then I came back to school and it was like the minute they dropped me off, that depression came back but it was worse, worse than it had ever been before. I knew that seeing my family doctor about this wasn’t going to help. I needed to see someone who specializes in depression, I needed to see a psychiatrist. I talked to my professor at the end of a class, and I got in to see a psychologist. He spent a lot of time trying to find out what was triggering this depression, what was going on and thought that it didn’t make sense. I said it doesn’t make sense, because at Christmas, I was fine. And the look on his face when I said that, I’ll never forget it. He just kinda shook his head and said what do you mean by fine? I told him how it’d just lifted and he said depression doesn’t just go away, it doesn’t just lift like that. So he had me fill out some forms and once those were completed, he said he needed a psychiatrist to confirm the diagnosis, but said, “I believe you have a very classic case of what is known as bipolar disorder”. I looked at him and said “ha you have to be kidding me right? that is not what I have”. He said, “But what you have is a very different type, it’s not been known about for very long. It’s called type 2. That episode you had at Christmas is what we call hypomania”.

He was able to get me in to see a psychiatrist who specializes in mood disorders, put me on a mood stabilizer and an antipsychotic. The antipsychotic was to help me sleep because by this time I hadn’t slept in months. Within 72 hours the depression was gone. I saw him regularly after that and everything seemed to be going fine.

By this point I had gotten Spirit to help me as a therapy dog. She went through the foster puppy program. I thought the ok, the dog will help. Then it just became too much; living in a house with friends, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, on a mood stabilizer and anti-psychotic and a dog, and I just couldn’t do it.

So I talked to the school and said I’m gonna have to drop out this year. But they said, we can help you. And I said, well what I need is my mom to move down here and stay with me. And they said that’s fine, we’ll get you housing for that. They were able to get me an on-campus apartment. It was tight, it was a 1 bedroom apartment for me and my mom to stay in during the week, and then we were travelling home on the weekends to be with the rest of the family.

So after that, everything was fine. I finished school that semester. I did very well. A year and a half later, the mood stabilizer (it’s known to do this), it’s called pooping out, your body becomes tolerant to it and then it stops working. Because my body is so dependent on that drug to fix the chemical imbalance, that when it stopped working, the depression came back right away.

At this point, I had my first panic attack in school. This was supposed to be my last year of school, so I just attributed it to school. But the depression got out of control, during which time I saw my psychiatrist regularly and I was put on another mood stabilizer and an anti-anxiety, so by this point I was on 2 mood stabilizer, an anti-psychotic and an anti-anxiety pill. All I did was sleep, I barely got to school, and it was very clear at this point I was going to have to stay another year. At this point it felt like it was the end. I lost a year of school, I said I don’t have any friends left, cause they don’t call anymore, they don’t understand. I said I have my mom and that’ it and I have my dog. Then my very best friend called and I told her and she said, “you gotta go to the hospital, you have no choice”. I had another friend who came over that night and said “I’ll take the dogs for you”. My biggest concern was, who’s gonna look after the dogs?