Over half of young people in Scotland say that they wouldn’t speak to someone about their mental health. Eighteen-year-old Orla, from West Kilbride, has struggled with low mood and anxiety since she was 14, and says it took her over a year to finally open up and get help. Here, she shares her story.
I began to struggle with low mood and some spots of anxiety. The conclusion I came to was it was that as my hormones changed, the low mood began to increase.
That experience of low mood led me to other coping mechanisms when I couldn’t reach out and I didn’t feel like I had the opportunity to talk to people about how I was feeling. I was also struggling with my sexuality at that point, and that led to a lot of internalized stigma about how I was feeling, about both my mental health and my sexuality.
As a 14-year-old in a school where mental health wasn’t really talked about yet, I was definitely concerned about the reaction of adults. We had just one lesson on mental health delivered by a PE teacher — there’s not a lot to go on, so you don’t have that faith in the adult community to speak out about it. I felt it was a very isolating experience, to not have these open discussions in the classroom or in the house.
I didn’t reach out at first, because I felt alone in how I was feeling. It was actually my friends who encouraged me to start speaking to adults — that’s when I finally reached out, after about a year of feeling this way. It was a long time, and a long build up until I felt able to speak to someone.
The first person that I spoke to were my parents, and they dealt with it very well. They got in contact with the school and my GP, and the GP got in contact with services like CAMHS and the school counsellor. For me, personally, I had an okay experience. However, I know lots of my friends have had terrible experiences with the same teachers I dealt with.
One of the main stigmatizing phrases that a lot of young people have heard is that ‘you’re too young to feel that way’. Or it’s just hormones — and sometimes it is just hormones. But it kind of belittles a young person’s problem makes it feel like, ‘Oh, you’ll grow out of it. It’s just a phase.’ Whereas what they’re feeling in that moment is very real, and it should be treated as such.
When I’m feeling low, I find music incredibly helpful. I’ve got my sad playlist, so if I ever want to have a good cry, which I find to be helpful, I just put some sad songs on. If you want to just listen to really angry shouting music, then listen to angry shouting music and that’s a way to channel your emotions in a much healthier way. That’s what FeelsFM enables young people to do really easily.
I think as a community as a whole, in Scotland, in the UK and across the world, we all need to be able to create a more welcoming environment that allows the people who are struggling to speak about how they’re feeling and reach out for that help. It’s a collective responsibility that we all need to take on.
