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Living with depression in college: Much more than having a bad day

By Carly Berndt, berndtcn@miamioh.edu

Depression, as I assume most people know, is a mental illness that affects millions of people nation and worldwide. So common in fact, that "having depression," or, "being depressed," has almost become a taboo expression that is becoming less associated with the mental illness and more so used to overstate someone's mood.

As someone living with and suffering through depression, there is one thing I want to make clear throughout the next couple paragraphs: depression, no matter how common, is a mental illness, and it should be treated as one.

I've been dealing with depression since I was 12 years old. I went on and off four or five different medications and visited more than one therapist before my family and I found a regimen that worked for me. I dealt with (and sometimes still deal with) the thoughts and actions of self-harm a lot of people dealing with depression end up dealing with. I've been through weeks where I couldn't have loved myself more only to one day fall apart over what seems like nothing.

The disease is ugly and all consuming. It is not invincible, but it is hard. For some people, going off to college and being able to start over and reinvent yourself eases the pain. For others, myself included, the battle is just as hard here.

I say "living with and suffering through" depression because these are two different states of being. Back in high school and middle school, still sheltered by the innocence of childhood and adolescence, it was different. When I had a bad day or a bad week or a bad month, it was easy to sort of hit the "pause" button on life. I come from a small suburb of Columbus, Ohio, where if I fell apart I had a whole community of people, whether it be at school or at home, ready to build me back up. I could take my time to get myself together, and pick up where I left off.

In college, the only thing falling apart really means is it's going to be a lot harder to get through your normal day-to-day activities. You're technically an adult, and you're expected to act like one. There is no "pause" button. The weekend is your pause button, and if you can't get it together in three days, you have to learn to manage.

You don't get to "suffer" through depression as an adult, or even as a pseudo-adult. You don't have the option to just give up for a little bit. You have to live through it. You have to get up every day and be a functioning student. You have to live through it, and you have to manage it.

The thing is, learning to manage isn't something that can really be taught. It's a part of life you're just kind of expected to know how to do. If you've ever taken an intro level class (who hasn't?), it's kind of like walking in the first day and your professor expecting you to know a sizable amount of the material already. "Why do they expect me to know this already," you would think to yourself.

The only thing worse than being in an intro-level class and being expected to know some of the material is being in an intro level class, being expected to know some of the material and being the only person in the room who doesn't. The only thing worse than that is people downplaying the struggle of catching up.

Though I am broadcasting my story via the school paper, I have a feeling that our readership numbers are not necessarily on par with that of the The New York Times.

I'm not one of those people that go around talking about her problems to anyone who will listen, but the people I have talked to about my struggle with depression have reacted in one of two ways: they're either supportive of what I need and try to help, or they brush it off because "everyone gets depressed sometimes." There is some truth to that. Everyone does "get depressed" time and time again, that's just how life works. But there is a huge difference between feeling depressed and sad sometimes and actually dealing with depression, a difference that I've seen become more and more obscured. People write it off because it's so common, and because sometimes other people's issues don't seem like they're a big deal or like they're really "that bad."

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Writing off depression is essentially saying "I don't care about your pain," or "your struggles aren't real." As someone who has experienced people sweeping my struggles aside as well as unconditional support, I can say depression needs to be treated as what it is: a mental ilness. It's not a bad day or a rough weekend with too many drunken mistakes; it's a state of being. It's feeling alone, replaceable, insignificant, worthless and vulnerable. Depression is not just a run-of-the-mill experience. Seeing it that way does nothing but alienate and hurt those suffering, while also developing false understandings and stereotypes about the disease.