I have been described as many different things. To friends, I’m a fun-loving, social person, who is way too confident. To others, I’m arrogant, reserved and materialistic. But no one really saw me as unhappy. Many still don’t.

There’s quite a few questionnaires that measure your anxiety and depression levels. Two that are often used by GPs are the GAD7, which looks at anxiety, and the PHQ9, which looks at depression. They suggested that I had moderate anxiety, and that I was severely depressed. These are two things that aren’t very nice to live with, or to experience.

Anxiety can make you worried about a situation, overanalyse it and expect the worst. It makes you worry about situations which normally don’t demand any concern, or nervousness. I become anxious when I think about university, about courses, deadlines, exams, even before I’ve even started the academic year – I doubt myself. I get anxious when I speak to people; I’m scared I’m bothering them, that they hate me. I get anxious when I walk into a lecture theatre, surrounded by peers who don’t even know me, scared that they are secretly judging how I look, how I dress. It makes you push yourself away from people and situations; it makes you excluded.

Depression isn’t something that I fully understand yet, because it’s complex and it varies from person to person in respect of severity and impact. For me, the biggest way of coping with depression is distracting myself. I notice my depression most in the evening. I live alone, so when I am at home, eating dinner by myself, with nothing and no one to occupy me, that’s when I feel it.

Due to anxiety and depression coupled together, I have these constant demotivating thoughts that I’m never going to get somewhere or be good enough, and it makes it impossible to want to get up in the morning. This makes things tough. I stop going to lectures and tutorials, I stop going out with friends as much or going to society things. My depression gets worse, because those distractions lessen, and I’m left alone, in my flat, with my thoughts. When you disengage in this way, life loses its vibrancy, and the fear of death, which is the fear of missing opportunities in the future, all disappear because they don’t seem attractive – it feels okay to die. I didn’t feel like life had much to offer, nothing brought me joy and nothing had a positive permanent impact on my happiness. It was all just a distraction from how I really felt; profoundly sad, and alone.

On the morning of Sunday 23rd October, I tried to kill myself.

I woke up in a hospital bed, with a catheter in my arm, my mind foggy and vision blurred. I asked where I was and staff told me I was in the hospital. They asked me if I had remembered what I had done – and I slowly remembered what happened. They took my vitals and then I remember them opening the curtain around my bed, and seeing other people in beds. I hid myself under my covers and fell asleep. I was woken by a psychiatrist, who proceeded to ask me things like “why did you try to kill yourself?” and “do you want to harm yourself now?”. The psychiatrist said she wouldn’t discharge me on the basis on my answers, and I pleaded my case. She called in an external consultant for another opinion after speaking to her senior. By this point, I was more aware of everything that was going on. I asked for my clothes as I woke up in a gown. I got changed and tried to walk out to go to the shop to get food. I was told I wasn’t allowed to leave. I went to the toilet afterwards in the ward; it didn’t have a lock on the door. The external consultant came in and signed off on my release. An email was written to my GP and the university counselling service to explain everything. I was told to make an urgent appointment with both.

Things feel different. I don’t just feel sad now, I notice that the way I feel is so ‘unnormal’. I’m seeing a counsellor, I have weekly meetings with my GP. Things are still difficult but I have a small amount of hope that because I’ve now sought help, things will start to get better. For now, when I get home after being out – for however long – I take a deep breath in and out and compose myself and just try and find things to do. I look for distractions again. Since that Sunday, I haven’t felt differently in terms of my emotions. However, it’s made me more accepting that I do need help. I continue to feel depressed, and anxious. I continue to have suicidal thoughts. After what happened, I don’t trust myself to buy tablets for a sore head, my doctor won’t prescribe me more sleeping pills. I’m trying to find normality in a very aberrant time in my life.

If you’re perplexed as to why I just spent so long talking about all this stuff; the reason I did, is because I wanted to simply urge anyone reading this who has depression, or anxiety, or ever just feels upset, to speak to someone. A GP, or a counsellor, or a friend. Your problems and emotions matter. And I know that I would always be scared to open up, but talking to someone really does help. The NUS (*rolls my eyes*) conducted a survey back in 2015 and found that almost 80 per cent of students reported having a mental health problem in the last year, and around half of those didn’t seek any support. A third of the people who had mental health issues felt suicidal.

The university provide help and support through counselling to those who need it. You can complete a self referral form online, or contact them for more information.

Edinburgh Crisis Centre – 0808 801 0414 (24 hr)