Doctors and healthcare professionals need to listen to young people and open up to the health and well-being benefits that the arts can bring
I’ve suffered from severe anxiety and depression since the age of 20. I tried again and again with many approaches to fight back against mental illness: therapy and exercise; cognitive behavioural therapy; medication; trying to be more open with the people closest to me. All of these things helped in different ways but they didn’t completely fix me.
Towards the end of my 20s I couldn’t cope. On numerous occasions I fantasised about taking my own life. I was in a lot of pain but it was a pain that nobody else could see, so it didn’t feel justifiable to me. It didn’t feel like it should have been there.
In my darkest time, I made a decision that I had one last thing to try – and that was to stop hiding. I couldn’t keep up this double life, portraying happiness to everybody. It started with a poem. I found that putting my thoughts and feelings into poetry somehow made them easier to say.
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