SJU Senior Talks Friends Being Her Light

A Senior Education major talks about her struggles with mental illness. 

A Senior at Saint Joseph’s University talks about her struggles with mental illness and how her friends have been her source of support over the last four years. More videos like this one on the topic of Mental Health can be found by going to http://mentalhealth.starttalkingsju.com/

This video was created in collaboration with the person depicted. All persons reviewed and signed consent forms granting permission to share this story online.

Mental health health has been apart my life probably my whole life not that I really knew it. But I started struggling since around senior year… stupid boy and it just kinda escalated from there.

Since Ive been at Saint Joes I’ve kind of just relied on my friends a lot. If I am having a bad day I can just call one of them up and say hey i’m not doing too hot I just need a minute or so, we can just go to Starbucks and hangout and that’s kinda how I get out of my funk.

Once I started making friends at saint joe’s I started relying on them and they started opening up to me and its just become a community of just my friends. And I think that through my time at Saint Joes I think that I’ve found myself within my mental illness not like hiding from it or running away from it and being able to talk about it and being really open about it.

It’s something that is so hard to talk about but once you do talk about it, its you’re immediately close and you have this amazing connection that might not be the best thing for your mental health but you can talk it out and figure it out amongst your friends and that’s really helpful.

I’ve learned to cope with it and I’m not ashamed that I have a mental illness and I don’t get upset when someone’s says “Oh you’re depressed” , like yes I have depression, its not that I am depressed, but I have depression, its a chemical imbalance in my brain and that is all it is.

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