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My Personal Recovery Story
I was first diagnosed with depression at about the age of twenty although I now realise that I had been having mental health problems for some time before my first diagnosis. It took me quite some time to accept that I was experiencing difficulties and refused to acknowledge that I needed help.
I have been admitted three times to Sunnyside hospital on the acute psychiatric ward since November 2000, and have spent in total just under 2 years as an in-patient. My first admission came after I took an overdose consisting of a cocktail of various different pills (about 70 in total) and suicidal thoughts and urges have always been a problem for me until recently.
I spent many years being treated by mainly the medical model, with meetings every now and again with my CPN, thinking that this was the way forward and that there was nothing else out there that could help me. I had great difficulty opening up about my problems and the way I felt. I was caught in a trap, hoping that one day my problems would resolve themselves and just disappear.
Since the summer of 2002, when my then partner whom I had met in Sunnyside hospital left me for my best friend after having had a 4 month affair with him while we were living together I barely set foot over the front door unless it was to walk my dog. I became isolated and too ashamed and depressed to socialise with others and had to give up my job. To add to this, in 2005 my eczema, which I had when was a baby, returned to haunt me just as I was starting to get myself together, and made me more self-conscious and depressed. I began to isolate myself even more as I couldn’t keep my eczema under control and was very embarrassed about it.
My third admission to Sunnyside came in November 2007 when I decided to admit voluntarily because I felt that if I did not, it would just be a matter of time before I was sectioned or did something drastic (suicide). During this admission I was introduced to augment, where I became vastly more aware of the meaning of recovery, something which I had previously heard about but no-one had ever talked to me about.
Through augment I have gained new skills through training and also through working with others and listening to what they have to say. A big breakthrough for me was a week’s recovery training for trainers with Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor in Drumoig, this gave me a much stronger understanding of recovery.
I was discharged from Sunnyside last month and honestly cannot remember a time over the past ten years when I felt better than I do right now. I have learned to be more open with my illness and difficulties; I now get out of bed in the morning with a purpose rather than just to face and try to survive another day. My week has a structure to it, I enjoy socialising and speaking to others, I no longer hide away. There has been a huge change in my life and I now feel that I am living rather than just existing.
My recovery, although still very much in progress has been a long time coming but now it is here I have a great deal of hope for the future and what I can achieve and accomplish, where before I thought I would be better off dead.
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Augment can help you