Content warning: This article contains mentions of sexual abuse, depression, and attempted suicide.

I am writing this article to share my personal experiences with mental health on campus. Specifically, this article is a way for me to find closure in my experiences accessing mental health resources and struggling with misdiagnosis.

To understand my experiences, I first have to tell you my story.

I have been struggling with mental health issues my whole life. As is the case for many students, my mental health got progressively worse once I started university. I would often fall into depressive episodes that left me completely unmotivated and exhausted for days. When I managed to finally come out of
those episodes, I would spend the following days frantically catching up on all the schoolwork I had pushed off, barely sleeping.

I was also extremely dependent on my grades for validation. Sometimes the only thing that got me out of bed was the wave of terror that would come over me as I imagined turning a paper in late or receiving a mark that did not meet my ridiculously high standards. I treated each deadline like a life or death situation.

During my second year, I began seeing an off-campus therapist at Psyvitality. In addition to my struggles with depression, I was dealing with the re-emergence of trauma I had long repressed. As a child, I faced serious sexual abuse from ages 7 to 12. Because I was so young, I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with that reality. Instead, I repressed it, and I repressed it well. For the remainder of my time in elementary school, I was able to function well enough. By high school, I had convinced myself nothing had ever happened.

Unfortunately, you can’t hold back unresolved trauma forever. After my first year exams, I went back to residence and celebrated with a few too many drinks. The vomit was not the only thing that forced its way up, and for the first time in 6 years I began remembering fragments of my abuse. I remember rocking back and forth on the couch crying, saying “it’s my fault” over and over again while two Residence Dons tried to decide whether or not I needed to go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.

From that moment onwards, I continued to experience flashbacks of my repressed memories. Sometimes once a month, sometimes all day. They became more and more difficult to ignore. Second year was the first time I ever opened up and shared my story. I tried shrooms for the first time and found the confidence to tell my girlfriend what had happened to me. It was one of the hardest nights of my life. I spoke for hours as tears streamed down our faces. In the morning, we began to talk about therapy options.

My first few appointments with my therapist were extremely difficult. I had to retell a story to a complete stranger that I myself had only barely come to terms with. In turn, that stranger was then going to tell me how to cope with an experience they never had to live through. Each time I left her office, I felt horrible. Twice a month I had to answer her questions and further unravel my memories, leaving me emotionally exhausted. I had heard that the first few sessions of therapy tend to be the most difficult and emotionally exhausting, and that it gets easier after
the first few months. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford many more months and had to stop after 3 sessions.

A few days after the second session, I attempted to take my own life.

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I have had two main experiences with mental health support on campus. In the summer before my third year, I sought support at the Health and Wellness Centre after my off-campus therapy sessions had ended. Ironically, my unhealthy dependency on my grades was one of the main obstacles that stood in the way of me accessing resources and support. How could I be depressed if I could maintain a high GPA? The Health and Wellness Centre appeared to think the same thing. They would dismiss my mental health claims, saying “if you can maintain a 4.0, you can’t be having that much trouble,” and, “you know, students with depression often find it hard to submit assignments on time or at all. You don’t seem to have an issue with that.” Nevertheless, they reluctantly booked a mental health assessment appointment for me.

Ironically, my unhealthy dependency on my grades was one of the main obstacles that stood in the way of me accessing resources and support.

By the end of the summer, I had received two different diagnoses: bipolar disorder and depression. The toll those months took on me was significant. For weeks, I was under the impression that I was bipolar. I spent hours each day watching YouTube videos of people who are bipolar sharing their stories and reading different articles online, trying to find myself in the hundreds of symptoms.

It was over a month later when a specialist finally told me that I was not bipolar and instead informed me that I suffered from depression. It was that same specialist that then proceeded to continuously press me on my sexual abuse history, urging me during each session to tell him the details of the encounters despite my repeated requests to not revisit my trauma. After three sessions, I felt so uncomfortable with his continued disregard for my boundaries that I stopped going.

For months afterwards, I blamed myself for quitting too early, for not giving a clear description of my symptoms which I believed led to my misdiagnosis, and for not putting in the effort to properly work on my mental health. Such a thought process is not constructive, and it took me a while to work through it. Closure for me does not lie in forgiveness. I will not dismiss my experiences by arguing that the therapist and specialist I saw were simply part of a larger process of underfunded mental health resources, although that reality cannot be denied. Closure lies in telling my story and recognizing that I cannot blame myself for those experiences.

I will not dismiss my experiences by arguing that the therapist and specialist I saw were simply part of a larger process of underfunded mental health resources, although that reality cannot be denied.

My second involvement with mental health support on campus was within Innis residence. Even before I began writing this article, I was still angry about my experience. It wasn’t until after I sat down with Dean of Students, Steve Masse, that I began to understand why things unfolded the way they did. After my attempted suicide, I was asked to meet with the then Residence Life Coordinator and Assistant Dean to check in. As a student that is involved within the IRC and is quite present around the residence, I felt embarrassed and ashamed to have the people I regularly met within a formal setting see me in such a vulnerable position.

I went into that meeting with Steve in the hope to better understand why Innis had encouraged me to follow such a confusing and humiliating path. Though I haven’t come to terms with the relationships I had with Health and Wellness staff, time has allowed me to see the intentions of the residence staff in a better light. After Steve had both validated my experiences and apologized, he laid out the importance of providing choices and a touchpoint of familiarity for students. While not denying my experience, Steve stated that for many, the voluntary meeting in the back office is a helpful and comforting space that makes them feel less alone and informs them about resources on campus. I left the meeting no longer feeling the same anger I had going in.

Mental health services at U of T are complicated and far from perfect, but my journey of gaining closure has allowed me to recognize when a system, such as Innis Residence, has a student’s best interests at heart. Through open discussions with students and staff, the residence is continuously improving its capacity to support its community members.