Banking on your mental health

More than 2 in 5 adult Australians (42.9%) have experienced a mental health disorder in their lifetime. I’m one of them.

I was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder in the late 1980s. I was in my mid 20s, newly married, and working crazy hours, meeting deadlines. I was seemingly always on top of everything but felt … nothing. I quietly went about seeking treatment from a psychiatrist, was dosed up to the eyeballs on antidepressants for a couple of years (and remember very little of those years) and was ‘cured’.

My marriage ended abruptly in October 1996. Overnight I became a single working parent with two little ones (aged 2 and 4), needing to find a home. 

Somewhere after the shock and grief, that old black dog, Depression, took residence again. And it brought its mate, Anxiety, with it. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for help: the children’s father was a newly-qualified psychiatrist himself, we’d socialised over the years with so many in the network. So I did something I could do behind closed doors: I started to self-medicate, numbing my feelings with alcohol, initially only on access weekends but gradually, as the kids grew up, more like nightly. It’s not something I’m proud of. 

As I was to learn, there was never any answer in the bottom of that bottle of wine, and alcohol was never going to soothe my sense of loss or loneliness,  despair and failure: all it did was make me feel worse about myself.

In 2006, with the kids (now young teens) away on access holidays, I quietly admitted myself into hospital for alcohol rehabilitation and commenced years of therapy. 

Those experiences are undoubtedly what drove me to learn more about the science of happiness, drew me to Laughter Yoga, and ultimately to change careers. I work for balance. I am a fabulous work in progress and maintain a vigilance to stay mentally well.