Been in and out of the mental health services since I was 12 years old. More recently the past 2 years have been the most I've been in them. Been so close to suicide a couple of times before, but don't think I could have ever gone through with it.
I still regularly suffer from issues daily, suicide ideation is there but I'm a lot better than I used to be earlier this year.
The stigma around it makes it horrible. I couldn't tell anybody but my mental health workers. I didn't even have the courage to tell me closest friends and family. There's such a mental block there for me. Even though I've been in them as a child and teenager my parents would never discuss it with me, always pretended there wasn't anything wrong, its really awkward.
Medication made a huge difference for me. Most notably Lamictal 100mg which stabilizes my mood swings, but doesn't get rid of them completely. It also helps me sleep and get slightly drowsy. No negative side effects.
Valdoxan is also a great anti-depressant. However it's expensive if you don't have a medical card. No side effects from these.
Fluoxetine has lame side effects and didn't work for me so quit after 2 months.
Strattera helps me concentration but it's still not great.
My issues, it's hard to figure out exactly. Lots of them, lots and lots. It's hard for me to explain the weird dysphoria and feelings I get. On paper it says depression, aspergers, adhd, dyspraxia. They made me keep mood diaries for bipolar but never came to a conclusion on it.
It's hard to know really.
after I was discharged from the mental health services at 18 I didn't needto return until I was 21, which was as simple as me making an appointment with my GP, it kinda snowballs from there and from my experience they're very quick to setup psychiatrist appointments.
From there you get CBT, WRAP, Occupation Therapy and various independent and voluntary support groups, however my wait for counselling was about 1 year. one night I was planning to crash my car into a toll booth and spent one night parked up on the motorway hard shoulder smoking and thinking about it, in reality I was hoping the gardai would show up and id have somebody to talk to.
lmao the only thing that happened was a truck driver beeped at me on the opposite side. No idea why ahaha. next day went to my gp told her about it, broke down. Funnily enough there was another lad crying in the waiting room too. Wonder if it was for the same issues.
Anyway, I've come to the conclusion ill be like this for the rest of my life. I'm okay with that at this moment, I've been living with it for 23 years now so its ok ill manage.
I'm a lot better, I work fulltime in a stressful job, have an education, have friends, a car, family, I'm lucky that way.