I am one of the lucky ones. My scars, though numerous, are fairly unobtrusive now. I have a tattoo on my arm, originally acquired both as a statement of intent – I will never break this skin again – and as something I could show off, be proud of. An incitement to wear short sleeves again, after more than a decade of hiding. It gets far more comments than the scars I intended it to hide.

I was born with eczema, an itchy skin condition that meant I was constantly scratching and often bleeding as a child. Because of that, I learned very early in my life that there are worse things than physical pain, that it can calm emotional turmoil and ground you. I was never scared of my own blood. In my early teens an inchoate horror grew inside me, a depression that consumed much of my childhood. When I first picked up a blade and took it to my own skin, it felt a natural, even logical, way to cope.

The years that followed were nightmarish for my parents, my family and those around me as well as myself. In some ways I was a typical teenager, with all the growing pains and problems that implies. But I was also struggling with a suffocating mental illness, alternately desperately needy and lashing out at others and myself. The most obvious, destructive manifestation of my depression was always my self-injury.

As with many self-destructive coping mechanisms – alcohol, drugs, food, gambling – some people dabble with self-harm and find it doesn't suit. Some treat it as an occasional vice, one tool among many to control or adapt to emotions. Others, like me, find it suits them far too well and become addicted to the release it offers. It is, for me, a solution to a problem, a counter-intuitive act of self-care; repeatedly, when I tried to stop, the underlying depression became so unbearable that suicide seemed the only option. One psychologist told me that if they could bottle and sell the emotional assistance offered by self-injury, it would be one of the most effective anti-anxiety medications ever invented. Another told me I would most likely never stop needing to hurt myself. He was wrong.

During the decade when I was self-injuring, and in the years since, I have been lucky enough to get superb NHS treatment. Lucky, because for many adults their experiences of mental health services are months-long waiting lists for specialist treatment, busy A&E departments, a service stretched almost to breaking point that can't offer them the care that they so desperately need. Mental health professionals, nurses, doctors, teachers, family, friends – all took fantastic care of me, even when I was so ill I was fighting every step of the way against the hard work of getting better.

For a long time I thought my struggles with mental illness would always be written on my body in letters so large they couldn't be ignored. Nowadays it's hard to divine my history. That's true for a vast majority of people with mental health issues, whether recovered or not; a part of our identities is hidden. The stigma attached to mental illness is very real, and has a double impact. On one hand, depression and self-injury are not things you feel able to casually mention, despite the fact that it might be a constant presence in your life. On the other, it is still hard to break through the perception barrier that suggests successful, seemingly together people might once not have been so – and might in fact currently be struggling, however they appear from the outside.

But I am one of the lucky ones. Not only did I survive – I recovered. With time, incredibly hard work, and help from more people than it's possible to count, I found better ways of coping with depression. Once it was possible, I managed to put down the razor blades and got on with life. It was depression that almost killed me. Self-injury kept me alive for long enough to work out how to stop it.

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