How I Found Hope Again in My Long-Term Depression

For most of my life, my mental health controlled me, leading to cycles of hospitalization and despair. This is my journey through those darkest moments and how my current therapist helped me rediscover hope and the strength to keep fighting.

Content warning: This article contains references to suicide and suicidal ideation.

There I was, crying through quadratic equations again and fantasizing about a psych ward lock-up.

For so long, I’d fantasized about being admitted to a mental hospital: sliding into a gown that a nurse would tie all the way down my back with a plastic bracelet circled around the bones of one of my wrists. It would say my name and my admitting psychiatrist’s names in undeniably bold print that told everyone that I’d been admitted to the child/adolescent psych ward.

Essentially, I’d lost hope.

In the hospital, there would be no sharp objects: no soda cans, jewelry, or paper clips. There would be other teens who were going through the same thing I was: the consuming sadness that comes with depression, the desire to be dead, and the complete lack of hope.

I hoped there would be a doctor who would join me in a tiny consultation room and tell me exactly what was wrong with me and what he was going to do to make me better — to heal me.

I’d spent so many hours in my outpatient psychiatrist’s office, digging my flip-flops into the plush carpeting and reading the spines on all of her psychiatry textbooks. “Keep taking your pills, Elizabeth,” was all that she could say. I begged her to put me in the hospital.

“Kids who request psychiatric hospitalization are really sick,” she told my mother. Yet, still, nothing ever changed.

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Getting through high school severely depressed

During high school, I cycled through one psychiatrist’s office after another. I was an angsty teenager who couldn’t seem to make it through a single day at school. When I was 15, I overdosed on a few handfuls of the only antidepressants that seemed to be making me worse.

I ended up in the emergency room for the very first time, with my wrists and ankles restrained to a hospital stretcher and IV juice flowing through my veins, screaming at the top of my lungs every time someone came into my hospital room.

Battling feelings of despair

I didn’t know why I was so depressed, why I felt so hopeless. I was kicking ass in my high school classes, on track to get into a prestigious college. I had lots of friends who worried so much about me that they dragged me to the cafeteria at lunchtime to shove forkfuls of chicken Caesar salad down my throat. And I had the most wonderful family: my mother was always my best friend who loved me unconditionally.

I even had a boyfriend who seemed to adore me. If you considered all the facts, there was no reason to be sad.

But the depression was only getting worse and more dangerous. I was more dedicated to hurting myself any way that I could.

I tried to tell people that I was going under — to anyone who would listen, really. I felt like I was a lost cause. The school psychologist was concerned about all the time I was spending with the social worker, saying, “this is a school, not a mental health facility.”

I probably should’ve been admitted to the psych ward a hell of a lot sooner. I didn’t care that the doors would lock behind me or that I would have to swallow pills throughout the day. I wasn’t scared of the hospital like many other teens would’ve been.

I knew that if things got bad enough, I could confess my suicidal thoughts to the school social worker.

Experiencing several hospitalizations in college

Somehow, I made it through high school, at the very top of my class, too. When it was time to pick a college, I had many choices. On paper, life was going wonderful. I had everything that I’d ever wanted.

I flew across the country to attend the University of Michigan. I’d even been accepted to the Honors Program. But I quickly learned that you can’t run away from your problems. My depression came along and resided with me in my dorm room.

I ended up in the Psych ER several times and then was admitted to the inpatient psychiatric unit twice in only a matter of weeks. I was barely able to leave my bed and spent many days and nights popping pills to keep me asleep.

I spent a great deal of time sobbing in my dorm room. My roommate and her boyfriend stared at me and continued to beg me to reach out to my psychiatrist. The depression worsened, becoming like a runaway train by the time I gave in to call the therapist who had discharged me from the psych ward.

But I’d missed too many classes and couldn’t catch up. My mom took a red-eye flight and sat on the edge of my bed in the hospital. She brushed the tears out of my eyes as they slid down my face.

“This is a holding pattern, Bets,” she said. “I’ll take care of you.”

Adjusting to a life centered around my mental health

The day we packed up my dorm room was one of the hardest of my life.

It took me 10 years to finish my bachelor’s degree because I was in and out of the hospital. I transferred to a university that was closer to my mom’s house.

Right from the start, I realized that I was a lost cause. I stumbled my way to the Counseling and Psychological Services office at my college because I didn’t know where else to go. The psychologist I saw was concerned that I would go back to my dorm room and overdose again.

I found myself in the county crisis center, sitting across from a counselor who begged me to check myself into a psychiatric hospital. He looked relieved after finding a bed for me at a hospital across town.

I spent a lot of time with Dr. M, meeting every morning in the psych ward dayroom. When I found myself becoming even more depressed, I refused to leave my hospital bedroom. Dr. M would grab my social worker, and the two of them would pull up chairs to my bedside, telling me that they were concerned about the worsening of my depression.

The nurses were concurring about this: that I wasn’t coming out of my room. My favorite nurse confessed that she had depression, too. She knew that I craved pumpkin pie and brought me slices from the cafeteria.

When I stopped eating and drinking, Dr. M was even more concerned. In order to draw my blood to ensure my electrolytes were at a safe level, it took the phlebotomist six sticks in random veins all over my body. When I did leave my room, I screamed at the other patients and the staff members, too.

They put me in a locked room that had a video camera in it so the nurses could see every move I made. I paced for hours and then sat on the mattress, rocking back and forth. After I started scratching myself with my fingernails, they gave me medication to slow me down.

Struggling to find my path to recovery

I’ve paced through many psych ward hallways, waiting for my medication to kick in and do something. I was always so desperate for relief. At the same time, I wanted to change out of my hospital clothes and stop taking medications. I was jealous of my younger brother, who wasn’t confined to psych wards.

How come we have the same genes, but I was the one in these hospitals while he was getting his doctorate and on his way to becoming a professor? Why did things come so easily to him?

After swallowing a bottle of mood stabilizers after only 1 day of being discharged from the psych ward, the chairman of the psychiatry department was brought in to consult on my case. He decided that the only way out of my torment was through electroconvulsive therapy.

I was terrified but desperate enough to sign the consent forms to allow the doctors to apply the electricity that would induce a seizure and reset the chemicals in my brain.

I’d lost hope for my recovery. I would try a new medication and then somehow end up back on a psych ward stretcher with drool sliding down my chin as I tossed and turned.

I lived in hospital gowns. I traded metal zippers on denim for the twists and ties of hospital gowns. I shivered in ER hallways, draping thick hospital blankets around my body while I waited for the psych consult to come to my stretcher, to decide if I would be admitted.

Persisting despair and unsuccessful treatments

A few years later, I had my first job, supervising a residence hall. I had somehow made it through graduate school. But it was beyond stressful.

I ended up having one depressive episode after another. Before long, I found myself sitting in the corner of a psych ward seclusion room in between injections of Zyprexa, a sedating medication that was meant to slow down my thoughts.

In between rocking back and forth, I wiped the drool from the corners of my mouth as it slid all the way down my hospital clothing. Hospital staff members periodically glanced at me through a tiny window. Some of them had cracks in their lips, while others wore lipstick.

“You’re in a psychiatric emergency,” my doctor told me. “The medications I’m giving you aren’t working, so I’m recommending a more intensive treatment like ECT.” She told my mother the exact same thing. At that point, I couldn’t really understand where I was. I had forgotten my mom’s phone number.

There were more psychiatrists and medications that made me gain weight and make my hands tremble. In the ER I was often put in the psychiatric section, which felt more like a prison. The toilets were made of silver metal and pieces of crusted toilet paper were stuck to the mirror. When I looked at my reflection, I only saw a “crazy” person staring back at me.

I felt hopeless. The treatments weren’t working anymore.

Discovering hope and finding myself again

And then Dr. S came, this amazing psychiatrist who was unlike any other — a doctor who saved my life. She came when I needed her the most. I’ve always felt like that “crazy person,” but Dr. S has shown me the way to the other side.

There’s another way to do things, outside of emergency rooms and psych wards.

I’ve been in treatment with her for a year now, and she’s gotten to know me as a person. She listens to me and will do whatever she can to keep me feeling sane. This is amazing for someone who’s spent so much time in the psych ward, decked out in a flimsy hospital gown and socks.

She’s given me hope for my future and has saved me from the worst my depression has to offer. She’s been the best advocate for me, making sure that the ECT coordinator keeps me on the schedule.

Dr. S is an expert when it comes to balancing medications and finding new ones. And she helps me see that there’s more to psychiatry and mental health treatment than medications. In every session, Dr. S teaches me how to optimize my brain health. This can look like exercise, proper nutrition, and building a life for myself outside of my mood disorder. 

My father had a mood disorder, too, and I don’t want to end up like him. When she came into my life, Dr. S saved me. She’s given me hope that I can still live my life with my depression.

The takeaway

The most important thing is that Dr. S treats me like a human being; enforcing that I am me, Elizabeth, and not a patient with a severe mood disorder that cycles through mental hospitals. She believes that I can stay out of the hospital.

Sitting in her office, she talks to me like we’re sharing lattes. I don’t feel like I’m in a doctor’s office. It’s small but cozy, and I feel entirely cared for. I’m so grateful that I have someone so brilliant and kind in my corner — that she’s on my team. I am blessed.