Mental Health Youth Crisis
#MoreThanIDid — Chapter. 2
Written by Oliver Schofield
“After 10 years of trauma caused by services and having to fight for the right support, I feel like I can finally say I have a sense of closure.”
I lost the whole of my early twenties to my mental health, convinced I didn’t want to live anymore and believing the world would be a better place without me in it. There was a time I really didn’t see any other way through the pain and the darkness.
The last 18 years I’ve proved to myself (and hopefully to others) that these things can change, I appreciate being here so much and I’m so grateful for where I am now (despite the bad days). It’s been a painful journey of growth but a journey I know I had to make.
If you’d asked the people that knew me 10 or 15 years ago to describe me, I don’t think many of them would’ve said ‘a person with mental illness,’ or ‘a person who would consider suicide.’ — Yet suicide felt like my only option for a large proportion of my early twenties.
I was a person with everything to live for, but beneath my persona of a happy and hopeful young man: 'i was lost, hopeless and scared.' — I still have moments where I feel lost, hopeless and scared, I still have daily anxiety that is sometimes so relentless it leaves me paralysed.
And that’s ok, I’ve learned that recovery is about coping or living with these feelings or thoughts not about the absence of them. I have lots of regrets and feel lots of shame about how this part of my life panned out and if I could take it back and re-do those years 'I would.'
There’s also a part of me that wouldn’t because everything happens for a reason and I am where I am today, I am who I am today because of that and I am so proud of me.
The trauma I’ve experienced from mental health services is indescribable and at times they have reduced me to less than a human, to them I was a number, a diagnosis, a ‘difficult’ patient. I am none of those things, I am a human being.
I found strength during those dark times in the people around me who loved me and advocated for me, I found strength in talking about it also sharing my experiences and reaching out to others and now I find strength in looking at my own journey and in advocating for others.
Despite the trauma mental health services have inflicted upon me, there have also been many professionals who have treated me with kindness and compassion. There are professionals who want to learn and do better also I’ve seen some changes being made.
I’m so grateful for every act of kindness, I’m so glad changes are being implemented and I am so privileged to be in a position where I can work with services to improve things advocate for others. It’s a privilege not many have and I won’t stop until I’ve made a huge difference.
There’s so many people I have to thank, mainly my incredible family who have stuck by me through the darkness and who themselves are just as traumatised as I am. I’ll be forever sorry for what I put them through and what they had to see.
A moment of thanks to every professional who has seen me as an individual, who has allowed me to speak out and who has withheld judgement. I hope they know who they are and how much it has meant to me, my bad experiences outweigh the good but that kindness saved me more than once.
Also, a big fuck to every single professional who told me I was being “dramatic,” “manipulative,” or “attention-seeking,” who tried to define me by my diagnosis and my lowest points. I’m here despite your support not because of it.
My experiences cannot be summed up in an article, my whole journey can’t be explained with limited characters. I have a lot of healing left to do and a long way still to go but I’m here, free, happy, confused all the time but I’m alive.
As the psychiatrist said to me today, “impressive.”
