This is Me: A Global Dialogue on Mental Health

[electronic music] 

Heidi S.: I'm here today to talk about depression. 

Heidi H.: My mental health conditions are 

attention deficit disorder and depression. 

Carlos: Today, I'm sharing what happened with my mom 

when she was diagnosed with anxiety and depression disorder. 

Lindsay: I have depression and anxiety. 

Matthew: I suffer from depression. 

Heidi S.: There are more of us than you think. 

Matthew: I was diagnosed when I was early 20s in university. I've suffered from depressive episodes throughout my life. 

Lindsay: I was first diagnosed with depression and anxiety two years ago. In retrospect, oh, it's something that I probably struggled with my entire life. However, two years ago it got to a point that I was no longer able to cope with it without help. 

Heidi S.: Anxiety was getting worse. I was keeping a brave face up at work, but the normal sort of challenges that I'd bat away, they were really incredible and insurmountable obstacles that I, I just couldn't deal with. 

And then one day I went in for a one-to-one with my manager and he asked just one of those typical questions, "How ya doing?" And boy, did he have a surprise because I pretty much broke down in his office and told him where I was at and what was going on. 

Carlos: Whenever you are taking care of someone who has a mental disease you have to make sure as well to take care of yourself. 

Heidi H.: The brain processes information differently in ADD. So, at work, I had to create my own structure and teaching myself what it means to do a task from start to finish. 

Lindsay: I really struggled with concentration, I couldn't sleep, um, I had lost my appetite and the biggest thing for me was focus. 

Matthew: So the advice I would, I would give managers who are dealing with, ah, someone with a, a mental health condition is to be sure that they have an open, honest dialogue with the individual, they try and communicate with the individual and they try and understand the challenges that they're facing. Although you think there's a stigma and you think it is a culture where people don't talk about it, when you actually make a decision to talk about it, the support that you get is, um, is incredible. 

Lindsay: Talking about it definitely made it very real for me. And talking to my manager made me realize that it was also OK. 

Heidi S.: You're not alone. 

Lindsay: Mental health doesn't define you. Reach out to get the support that you require. 

Heidi H: And there are other people that are struggling >out there just like you. Mental health is important. 

Carlos: More people than you might expect are suffering every day. 

Matthew: Reach out to start the healing process.