Dani - Interview 16

Age at interview: 24

Age at diagnosis: 14

Brief Outline: Dani has experienced three main episodes of depression ' at 14 when she was first diagnosed, again during Year 12, and her most recent period began when she was about 22. Dani struggles with her self-esteem and when her mood is low finds sharing her feelings difficult. She says her depression has been brought on by feelings of not fitting in at school and stressful life events. Dani has found a combination of medication and counseling helpful, particularly cognitive and mindfulness techniques.

Background: Dani studies counseling part-time, does volunteer work with young people, and lives in a share house. Ethnic background' Anglo Australian.

More about me...

The first signs that things weren’t right for Dani appeared when she was 14 and included a loss of interest in school, difficulty getting up in the morning, poor control of her diabetes and not wanting to spend time with her friends. Although she had been diagnosed with diabetes at age five and was used to managing this well, suddenly she realised that her life was very different from that of her friends, and her vigilance waned. Dani’s mother noticed this, and sensing something was amiss, took her daughter to the doctor. This led to a referral to a psychologist, and the diagnosis of depression.

 

Dani saw the psychologist regularly for several months, and worked with her on cognitive-behavioural tasks such as challenging negative thoughts, and goal-setting. She found this very helpful, and was able to get back to what she describes as a ‘good place’. This saw her through to Year 12, when the stress of the HSC triggered another episode. Again, the early signs were difficulty completing school work and attending classes, stopping sport and music, and distancing herself from and fighting with her friends. A TV documentary about young people and depression made her realise that she needed help, and she spoke to a teacher at school. This time she was referred to both a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and started antidepressant medication.

 

Dani found it difficult to accept the need for her to see a psychiatrist and take medication, as felt that this again marked her as different from her friends and peers, when all she wanted was to fit in and be the same as everyone else. However, once she was on a medication that suited her she found that it made her head clearer and helped her to take care of herself better. Throughout her final year of school, Dani continued to work with the psychologist on managing her thoughts and feelings. This was helpful, as was the psychologist’s role as someone she could ‘check in’ with every week or so. Although Dani has remained on medication since first taking it, the three or four years following Year 12 were relatively stable and she didn’t need to see any mental health professionals. However at 22, her mood dropped again. This time, she was hospitalised for a short time while a new medication regimen was established, and she has been seeing a psychiatrist since then.

 

Over the past ten years since her first episode, Dani has come to terms with her depression, and feels that it has helped her grow as a person in that she is now both more accepting of her thoughts and moods. She says a combination of medication and non-medical therapies have worked best for her, as well as talking with her parents and friends about how she is feeling – as hard as this been at times. Art therapy has also been helpful, as has her volunteer work as this makes her realise that she needs to look after herself in order to be able to help others. She feels that health professionals do a good job but could show more empathy at times, and also would like to see more support for the family and friends of people with depression. Dani is looking forward to the future, and has a long list of things she wants to do and experience.

 

Dani thought that while her parents were reluctant to attend a support group that it would have...

I think that would be a good idea. I think my parents were reluctant to go to support groups. And that might just be my parents, but I think they found that kind of hard. But they’ve often said to me that it would have been nice to have someone to talk to. And so I think that’s just as important. And I think it would have actually helped me as well because we often got into arguments about it. Whereas I think if they had the opportunity to say what they were feeling and talk about it with someone else we probably would have had a better relationship. 

Dani tried CBT and mindfulness and found the latter worked better for her.

When I started seeing the psychologist, I started working on just challenging negative thoughts and doing some cognitive behavioural therapy which I found really helpful, though challenging. But and it’s something that I still work on. But that was one of the main things and I think just having someone to talk to really helped because I didn’t feel so alone and kind of working on small, manageable goals like making sure that I got up and got dressed and I went to school. And if I could go to, go to work or something like that. So having goals and kind of challenging negative thoughts really helped. 

 

I think… I think I saw the psychologist once a week, and then that lessened to once a fortnight and then I didn’t end up needing her anymore. That was quite a short period of time. So I - yeah I saw her quite a lot, but then I didn’t end up needing it so I just stopped seeing her. 

 

I’ve been working really hard on mindfulness at the moment which I know is kind of being saturated everywhere. But mindfulness I’ve actually found really helpful because I’ve often find, found cognitive behavioural therapy - I find that with thought challenging and things like that, I just can go back and forth all the time and I can always find an argument to contradict a more positive thought. And so whilst I think that has its place I often found it kind of pointless.

 

So having mindfulness which is just where you don’t necessarily challenge a thought but just acknowledge it and try and get some distance from it, has been really helpful as well because it’s given me the opportunity to accept what I’m thinking and feeling but also allow me to see that from a distance, so that’s been really good as well.

 

Dani felt 'pretty low' and was not able to focus on her studies.

Well I knew I’d been feeling pretty low for a long time and I’m pretty sure everyone around me knew the same thing. But I’m not sure they knew what to do. So I was really struggling at school, like I was struggling to go to class and concentrate and complete all my assessments. And that was the main focus for me in Year 12 was to finish the HSC. So to not be able to do those things was really hard. And everyone else around me was doing them, so I definitely noticed. And I think I also stopped playing sport and I stopped playing music, which is stuff that I really enjoyed before. And I stopped spending time with friends as much and I ended up fighting with most of my friends. 

Dani found art therapy particularly helpful in expressing herself and sorting out her thoughts...

I have done some art therapy before. That’s mainly because I am interested in it and that’s a career I want to pursue. but I found that really helpful especially if I find it really hard to talk. And sometimes being able to create art is, is a way for me to communicate if I don’t have the words. So I found art therapy really helpful, especially because when my mood’s really low I really struggle to talk about it. So it gives me a way to talk about it without having to say the words. 

 

Well the forms I’ve participated in, generally we get an exercise that - whatever it may be, like for example we had to one time draw a tree and how the tree represented ourselves and I think at first I was pretty sceptical about it, but if I actually started participating and it, I found that it actually uncovered a lot of thoughts about myself that I didn’t really recognise. And I also learned that some of the views I have about myself actually really impact my mood. And that’s been really important because I have to work on those as well. 

 

I think it also –it helped me explain things in a way that I didn’t find confronting, because I find talking about how I’m feeling really confronting and difficult. And I think I still need to talk and it’s really important that I do, but having art as kind of a medium to express that is often less confronting for me. So I found that really helpful.