Mental health and me

According to the UK government, approximately 20% of the British population suffers from depression or anxiety. While this number is staggeringly high, depression, and particularly the way it affects men isn’t discussed enough. Things need to change, and opening the conversation around mental health is the best possible starting point. We asked Sébastien to tells us, in his own words, how he lived with depression, and how talking about it saved his life.

"Why did you feel the need to come and speak to someone?

- I feel like I’m not doing well, I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to do it anymore.

- Do what, exactly?

- Life"

I’ve never really liked Mondays. Not that I’m very fond of any other workday, in all honesty. But this was an entirely different beast. The night in itself had been remarkably uneventful, but as I woke up, I felt weighed down. As if someone had replaced the feathers in my Ikea quilt with lead. All of a sudden, I’d been left to handle the entire world’s responsibilities and problems. I was in the midst of a thick fog that polluted my mind with melancholy, stress, and anxiety. Whatever, it was what it was. I still had to go to work. I knew I’d be better in a few hours’ time. I mean, who hasn’t already had an off day?

That was 5 years ago. Since then, and as is often the case in life, things got worse before they got better. First, my sleep went. Then, my eating habits. I was either never hungry, or eating until my stomach hurt. Intense mood swings too. I was permanently angry. So much so, that destructive and violent fantasies would leave me with trembling hands as soon as something didn’t go my way, which was often.

Point of no return

I ended up with tears in my eyes in the metro one day. The idea of sitting in a stale office environment for 10 hours to make someone I had absolutely no respect for even richer than he already was had left me on the verge of crying. There and then, I decided I wasn’t going to put up with that anymore. Working is a loser’s game anyway. Fuck employee life, I’m barely thirty but already too old for that shit. A few weeks later, I’d left work for good.

It turns out that while my job was certainly not helping my situation, it did bring some form of structure to a life that was clearly coming apart at the seams. Little by little, I stopped eating, drinking, washing, and getting out of bed. My entire life was taken over by a pain I struggled to fathom, I cared about nothing but that. I ended up totally exhausted and sat on the wrong side of the window sill of my studio flat in Paris. Six stories up and looking down. I don’t know why I didn’t jump; I just remember feeling very cold.

“Help me exist, before I could start living again”

Faced with the attraction of gravity and still reeling from the ease with which I’d climbed over a relatively high window sill, I turned to what many adults consider a last resort: I talked to my parents. I followed my father’s advice - he is a trained psychiatric nurse after all - and called a CMP. CMPs or centre médico-psychologique are free psychiatric centres in France, where anyone can get an appointment with a mental health specialist for free. Thank God for social security. I was very nervous when I called the centre, swinging between two uncomfortable extremes. On the one hand, I was terrified they’d classify my case as terminal, and on the other, I was suffering from imposter syndrome, 100% sure that my pain didn’t even register on the scale of sufferings that came through the CMP. That’s the thing with mental health, it robs you of any form of pragmatism. Fortunately, the CMP did a wonderful job. From the very first phone call to my first appointment, I was given all the attention I didn’t think I deserved.

After this conversation, I was diagnosed as depressed with BPD tendencies. In itself, nothing too surprising, but hearing it from a third party, someone external, a specialist, was very helpful. Who would’ve thought that even when you feel like dying, other people’s opinions would remain as important? I was first offered a treatment, in order to help me exist, before I could start living again.

That’s how I started getting out of bed. I had my meds. Chemical stabilisers to help me walk, one step at a time. After a few months following this regime, the psychiatrist recommended starting psychotherapy.

While I didn’t hesitate to ingest meds in relatively high doses, talking to a psychologist required inhuman levels of effort. I was happy I went through with it though, as it helped me with the following (this list is by no means comprehensive and in no order of importance):

Understanding my relationship to work, eating, and money (not great).

Trying to identify the beginning of my predicament (early, way too early).

Seeing things from a different angle (quite the endeavour when the only thing you’ve thought about for the past 6 months is yourself).

Learning to know myself better (work in progress).

Learning to be honest with my family and friends (difficult).

Learning to be honest with myself (extremely difficult).

More generally, I learned to live with my illness and to stop considering my state as being abnormal.

21st century health epidemic

Here are a few numbers in support of the previous statement. In the UK (and in most Western European countries), two-thirds of suicide victims are men. If you struggle with maths, that’s 75%. Suicide is the leading cause of death for men between the ages of 25 and 34, before cancer and traffic accidents. Mental health helplines such as CALM report that of all the causes leading to suicidal thoughts, loneliness comes up most often. In other words, not only is suicide a predominantly male affliction, but it stems from the most mundane issues.

Mental health problems can affect each and every one of us. Nobody is immune. It comes in as many shapes and forms as there are individual brains. It doesn’t require lifelong trauma. And most importantly, there is no hierarchy of pain for ills that are so inherently subjective. We all suffer, and it’s always important.

So, you have to talk about it. For yourself, as a means of healing, and for all of us. The quicker we remove the stigma around mental health, the sooner people will stop dying. You have to be careful, listen to yourself and others. Resilience is good, but not at any cost. Empathy is extremely important. Nobody chooses to be unhappy, depressed, miserable, or anxious. It isn’t as easy as simply “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” or “keeping your chin up”. You wouldn’t tell a leper to simply stop scratching at his sores, would you? You have to be patient. You have to learn to accept your vulnerability. You have to understand that nobody will ever judge you as harshly as you judge yourself. You have to realise that Instagram isn’t real life, and constantly comparing yourself to staged happiness and success is extremely dangerous. You have to make sure you stick to a healthy lifestyle. Three meals a day at fixed hours. Sleeping at least 6 hours a night. It might save your life, believe it or not.

While I’m still left with too many questions and not enough answers, I know that I’m not alone and that some questions need to remain unanswered. While I still suffer from off days, I know it’s only temporary. While I still find it complicated to imagine life after 40 because I can’t quite let go of the idea that I’ll be dead before then, I know that I can talk to my loved ones and specialists and that each conversation draws me away from the window sill.

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If you feel alone, isolated, unhappy, depressed or close to the edge, and need to talk to someone you can call any of the helplines listed here

Never be afraid to share, you’d be surprised to see how many people care.