So today’s video is gonna be a little more… personal.
Talking about mental health is something that’s really important to me because so often
it's stigmatized and considered something that’s not acceptable to talk about with people.
And I think in order to promote mental health awareness,
it needs to be discussed more often and made less of a taboo.
Before I just sat down to film this I was looking at some statistics about depression,
and it said something like 17.5 million people suffer from depression in the United States
and 2/3rds of those people go untreated.
And there was another statistic that said that 80% of people with depression who did get treatment
either recovered or showed improvement from their disorder.
And then thinking about the 2/3rds of people that go untreated
even though it's such a highly treatable disorder
makes me really sad and I think it shows a problem with our society
that so many people feel that they can't get help or don't know
what to do, or may not have known that what they were feeling was caused by depression.
Like in my case. Which is funny because I feel like most of my audience knew
that I was depressed before I did.
So... good job self. So we're gonna talk about it today
because I think it's important and stuff.
So about a year ago I made a video about social anxiety
and the sense of anxiousness that I feel
almost constantly, and the thing I didn't know is that depression and anxiety
often overlaps so it's kind of hard to like, separate one from the other
and it wasn't until I researched the symptoms of depression that I realized it
wasn't as cut and dry as I originally thought it was.
Cause I never felt sad or suicidal,
so I assumed that I wasn't depressed, but I didn't realize that there are so many more symptoms
and there's so much more to it than just that.
Every case of depression is different and it doesn't always mean that you feel sad.
It can also be a feeling of emptiness and anxiety,
and not wanting to do anything and feeling like
I wasn't a competent or worthwhile human being.
Pretty much with anything I said or did there was a constant cycle
of negative thoughts that made it impossible to feel good about myself.
Logically I knew I wasn't a totally shit human being, but the constant
negative thoughts kind of made it impossible for me to believe that,
and apparently low self esteem is a symptom of depression.
Another thing that I did not know
until like five months ago. Flash forward to me talking to my psychiatrist
about it, and finding a medication that worked for me
was legitimately the best thing I've ever done for myself.
Like, I think I'm in the best place that I've ever been in my entire life.
I feel like I can do things now and I feel competent.
My self esteem is so much better than it was before and
I feel comfortable with myself and for the first time I actually
really like myself as a human being.
It's funny because like my whole channel is kind of like dry and sarcastic
and pessimistic about life but I feel like now I'm just
disgustingly optimistic about things...
which is not a thing that I think anyone
really saw coming. For a really long time I was just like,
wow, I am a really negative and selfish person.
Depression is a really selfish disorder because you're so focused
on how shitty you feel and like your negative thoughts
that it makes it hard to care about other people. But now I can honestly
appreciate and care about the people around me in a way
that I wasn't able to before.
Cause once you work on your own shit then you can finally focus
on other people other than yourself.
This is probably the portion of the video where I'm supposed to give you advice
and the only advice I can really give you is that if you feel like something
is not right then go talk to someone about it.
I put that off for so long because I thought, oh, this isn't bad enough.
I'm probably fine. I can deal with it but you shouldn't have to deal with it
because there are options and there are treatments and they can improve your
life by so much.
It's not cheating or taking an easy way out.
It's doing something for yourself and I think one of the best possible things you
can do for yourself
is find a way to get mentally healthy.