I’m currently diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I would say most of my life I’ve been depressed, but I didn’t have a name for it until I was in college, and I guess the event that led up to it was a bad breakup with a boyfriend and an overdose. I was actually working in a mental health doctor’s office at the time, and they talked to me about going to therapy and going to see a doctor about depression. Once I did talk to the doctor about the symptoms that I was having, it made sense when he said depression. And when my therapist said you’re definitely depressed and you’ve been depressed for a long time…it was a relief.

When some members of my family found out that I was diagnosed with depression, it made sense to them like it did to me. From others I got a response like, "What do you have to be depressed about? You have a happy life."