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When I was first diagnosed with ADHD, I was about five years old.
I would say it kind of started in third grade when my uncle John committed suicide.
So that was kind of, you know, a big tragedy in the family.
My personal story for mental illness goes back.
It goes back to when I was young and I was seeing a lot, dealing with a lot.
I was diagnosed with bipolar at the age of five.
I was diagnosed with OCD and depression.
When we talk about our realities, that then we honor our realities for one thing.
And when we talk about our realities, then the things that need to change can start moving toward change.
When we don't talk about our realities, then that silence, those secrets and the denial of who and what we are and who and what is going on in our lives keeps us stuck individually and collectively.
In these discussions that are going on across the country, we wanted to make sure that young people have a voice in the discussions.
That young people have a way of being part of the change that needs to happen.
I'm Caitlin Benson. I'm 17 years old. I'm a senior at Amy Beale High School.
I live with mental illness. I am bipolar type too.
People get quiet when you tell them. When I tell them, I'm bipolar.
bipolar says directly rude comments, but you can tell they do get uncomfortable and change the subject immediately.
A lot of people will say, oh, just get over it. It'll be fine.
With mental illness, you just can't get over it. It's an illness. You can't get over cancer by yourself.
In our senior year, it's required that we participate in a community engagement project.
We want to work with Breaking the Silence, which is an organization that goes to schools and educates students on mental illness.
I'm Mallory Wolfe, and I'm also 17, and I'm working alongside Caitlin at Breaking the Silence.
People don't like to talk about it, even though it is, I mean, it's out there.
A lot of people are diagnosed with mental illness or aren't diagnosed, but it can be.
You know, I've seen how people treat those with mental illnesses, and it's just unfair.
I can be really, really happy for months on end. I can slip into a really bad depression for a long time.
And I have states where I'm really manic. I feel like I have to do everything at once.
Sometimes it's really hard for me to sleep. I was getting really abusive.
When I told my mom I was going to kill her, it hurt her a lot. I just feel really bad.
I was put into a mental institute.
I didn't really know what it was, because I was always the hyper kid.
Even now, I'm still really hyper. But when I was getting older, I started realizing how it was affecting me and affecting my day.
It's hard to concentrate in school and do my work. It's hard to stay still.
I was always really anxious, and I was starting to have panic attacks, and the littlest things would make me get mad, and I'd be crying, and nobody would understand what was happening.
A lot of people I couldn't talk to because they didn't understand what was going on with me or how I felt, and they would just say, oh, I'm sorry.
As we were talking about the mental illnesses, I purposely leave out OCD to see if other people know about it or not.
Because a lot of the times, when somebody cleans their room, they're going to say, oh, I'm OCD, so I clean my room.
If my phone is not in my front right pocket and my wallet is not in my back left, I feel off balance.
If I say I only have my wallet in my back left, but my phone is not in my front right, I will feel like my body is heavier on my left side.
The one thing that kind of, it's in my head, it's internal, nobody can see it, and what really, I guess, classifies me in what sent me to be diagnosed with OCD is the fact that I trace everything that I see.
Imagine that there's a black sharpie in your head right now and look around the room and everything that you look at outlined with that black sharpie.
And then do it 50 times, and then do it 100 times, and then don't stop until you look at something else.
Tiles, lockers, locks, people, backpacks, faces, columns, benches, trash cans, doors, doorways, windows, door handles, desks.
Everything that I saw, I could trace at least 50 times in five minutes before I sat down at my desk.
So we go to the doctor, come to find out the chemical in my brain, like, never balanced out.
So, like, with development, brain development, chemicals kind of align themselves, I guess, but mine just kind of hang out.
Occasionally, I would get depressed off and on, but I really didn't think about it.
People ignored me, called me names, you know, threw stuff at me, and it was just kind of, it felt degrading and like I was an outcast.
After that, I told my mom that I thought that I needed to go see her counselor slash doctor.
Since I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know if, you know, if I was like, what's going on with me.
People thought that I would be crazy or anything, so I kept quiet.
That, sisters, I dealt with this, you know, dealt with a lot of bullying in school, kids at school were being so mean, you know, they didn't, they didn't want,
they didn't want to go to school, to have to deal with them, you know, them to bully her, you know, to get her to the final level where she comes home and starts cutting herself.
I attempted suicide twice, my sophomore year of high school, because of anxiety levels, because I didn't know what was happening in my head.
I was in science class, and I was supposed to be doing work, but I wasn't.
And some things just sort of struck inside of me, and I thought to myself, if I don't get help, I'm going to die today.
I felt really abandoned, I just kind of thought that my mom didn't want to deal with me, so she was just like, here guys, take this kid.
Finally, it was near the two months before the end of the school, and, you know, I really wanted to just end it and kill myself.
I have thought about and attempted to commit suicide a few times.
I sent a text message to a very good friend of mine, and I asked her to meet me outside.
She did after class, and I couldn't talk, because I was just, I didn't know what to say.
So I just, I sent her a text saying, I'm going to kill myself tonight, and I'm really scared.
One night, I was in my room, and I just thought my school did it. I was crying a lot, and my mom came up and found me, and I told her I tried to kill myself, so I went to a hospital.
I called my one friend, too, the only person I could trust at the time, and she drove to my house, even though she was out of town and stuff, and just came to see me, and to talk to me.
And she didn't overreact. Like, I expected a lot of people, but she took things very calmly, and she just told me, Katelyn, you don't have to do that. You were loved.
My parents grew better every day, and that really kept my spirit up.
After I was diagnosed with the OCD, it kind of explained, like, well, now maybe I'll have strategies to cope with when my anxiety gets to the point of depression. I know why.
You know, it was around that point that I realized I wanted to be best support systems I could have, and it wasn't for that brand I wouldn't be here today.
A thing that I didn't realize until now is that how much my mom was really there for me.
She was there throughout the entire thing with me, now that I realize it. She was the only one who was truly there. She didn't stop loving me for all the things that I did to her.
The most helpful thing through these years was my family's support, knowing that I was loved, and getting on the right medication, and helping.
Well, my family helping me and doctors helping me.
Just having all the people, like, not having people say, oh, you're so stupid for wanting to do that, and people trying to understand why I was hurting so bad to want to take my own life, or trying to understand why I was feeling that way.
So just having all those positive people around me is definitely what pulled me out of that deep depression.
Don't be afraid. There's people out there who want to help. There's people out there. Don't be afraid to ask for help.
I think I've just kind of learned different ways to, like I said, embrace and cope with it.
If I'm able to just come out and say, hey, this is what it is, it's like, don't think of me any differently.
And then just kind of use my day-to-day life to prove to them that I am really no different from them, except our brains don't work the same.
If you don't understand, at least try to make a point to look up facts about a certain mental illness, or just to talk to that person who's struggling with that, and sort of see where they're coming from.
I wish that school officials would educate kids more about mental health, because, I mean, the only way that I would have known about this, I mean, is my family and our counselor slash doctor telling us these things.
But if it wasn't for him, I would have no idea of what was happening to me.
I think that it's important for people my age to talk about mental illness, because there's a lot of teens out there who are older than me and younger than me that don't understand what's happening with them,
and they think that they're going crazy, or people are still getting bullied or getting called crazy and, like, abnormal.
And in my opinion, I don't think there is a true definition of what normal is, because everybody's weird in their own way, and I think that people should just learn how to embrace themselves for who they are.
Everybody else puts on like this person, I guess, to, in the outside world, that makes them, it's like a, it's a lie that you tell yourself, hey, I'm, I'm normal, hey,
but when the mask comes off, it's really you in front of everyone, and everybody has that mask, and we took it off today.
I hope that just this video gets out, and people, they learn something from it, and that maybe it'll save some lives, and people can have a sense of hope.
I hope that voices are heard, and that change does happen for really the sanity and the sake of everybody suffering with mental illnesses.
What I hope for is that people will see this video, and things change, and that more events like this happen, more discussion about this.
I'm just glad that I got the opportunity to be here and to sit with folks like this and folks like you guys.
I hope this video gets across to some schools and can help people, and even school officials.
Thank you.
