Accepting My Role as a ‘Professional Patient’

For a long time, I resisted the fact that I live with a chronic mental health condition. But once I started taking my depression seriously and recognized the importance of my role in my own care, I’ve been able to live a more fulfilling and balanced life.

It started innocently enough with a few meetings with an adolescent psychiatrist in my freshman year of high school. I was diagnosed with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and told that I would need to take SSRI antidepressant medication for a while.

But the medications didn’t work, and I found myself getting more depressed and anxious. By the time I was in my sophomore year of high school, I could hardly function at all. I went to the school social worker’s office before my first class and stayed with her as long as I could get away with it.

Before long, she frequently called my mother down to the school to strategize how we were going to manage my unruly mood swings while staying in my classes. 

I even begged my mom to check me into the child/adolescent psychiatric unit that was on the other side of town. I could hardly make it through the day and had even started writing suicide notes in my classes when I should’ve been solving quadratic equations. My teachers complained about my spotty attendance, and the school’s psychologist brought me into her office and said, “This is a school, not a mental health facility.” 

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A life centered around my depression

My entire existence revolved around my depression and my frequent attempts to function. The cruelest part of the whole thing was that even through the worst of it, I could still see how life kept going on as usual. My friends were doing redox equations in honors chem, I had a boyfriend who liked to hang out at the park near my house, and I was still expected to get through the pages of “Jane Eyre” with the rest of AP English. 

But all I could think about was how miserable I felt. I was taking higher dosages of the antidepressants every few weeks and switching to new ones, too. Everything in my life revolved around the experience of depression and what I was going to do to feel better.

Some days, I resolved that I would do whatever it would take to get my life back. I would journal about my symptoms and bring my diary to meetings with my psychiatrist so she could see that the medications she was prescribing weren’t any better. 

In fact, I had the sinking feeling that they were only making me worse.

Letting go and losing control

College brought a new opportunity to focus on the world outside of mental health, psychiatrists, and medications. I was in denial about my mental health condition and stopped taking my psych medications altogether. I quickly fell into a suicidal depression, which landed me in the psych ER and then an admission to the inpatient psychiatric unit. 

Over the years, I’ve gone on and off my medications. I’m on a pretty complicated regimen, and sometimes, I feel tempted to stop taking the pills. It would make my life so much simpler if I didn’t need to swallow so many pills first thing in the morning and every night before bedtime.

I’m in regular contact with my psychiatrist as we try to get my medications to doses that are both safe and therapeutic. 

But sometimes, focusing on my depression serves me well. It’s helpful for me to go to sessions with my therapist and face these symptoms head-on. Being a “professional patient” may be the best way to lead a mindful coexistence with chronic depression.

Treating my mental health like a job

I need to keep track of how many hours of sleep I’m getting. I need to always be aware of where my mood is and if I need to reach out to my psychiatrist for medication adjustments.

I need to accept my mental health condition with grace because fighting against it and struggling not to be that “professional patient” only makes things so much harder. And life doesn’t have to be so “all-or-nothing.”

Sure, I have depression, but I can manage to find a way to still live life the way I was meant to. Being a professional patient just means that I always keep up to date with my mood and reach out to my psychiatrist immediately whenever we need to make adjustments to my dosage.

Finding peace in my responsibilities

I may hate depression, and it may be the burden that I was meant to carry on a daily basis. But living this way, constantly aware of my changes in mood and other depressive symptoms, helps me live with the illness instead of against it. Denial isn’t an effective way to deal with depression. 

Sometimes, it can seem like depression is a full-time job, so it helps to make a concerted effort to include other meaningful things in your life. This could be your actual job, a hobby, or being in school.

I think that finding a balance is the most effective way to manage the worst depression has to offer.

Bottom line

It’s important to focus on managing the symptoms without letting them take over your entire life. Maintaining a stable mood is a balancing act, and the most important part is figuring out what helps keep you afloat.