There’s this weird misconception that taking medication for your mental health makes you weak. There’s also a weird misconception that mental health medication is something you shouldn’t take because ‘nature is a natural antidepressant’.

I used to be really scared of taking medication for my mental health, mostly because of the huge stigma around it but also because I decided to read the long list of side effects almost all drugs have. The first thing I ever took for my mental health was something to help my anxiety and after a few months on it, I decided it wasn’t for me because although it sometimes calmed my anxiety, it also made my panic attacks worse when they did happen. I was put off medication for a while after that until things started to get really bad. I started antidepressants in 2017 and ever since then my life has completely changed for the better. The first few weeks sucked, I felt so ill and I was never hungry and it sucked but after a while I slowly but surely started to get better and I slowly and surely noticed my mental health also started to get better. I’ve been on my medication for a year and a half now and I’m so much more confident in myself and my panic attacks are so rare now that I can actually go out and enjoy myself. Medication hasn’t solved all my issues of course because I still do have really bad days and I still do get panic attacks but they’re not as frequent and I’ve found that the thoughts in my head are kinder than they used to be. I see the world very differently now than when I was at my worst and I owe a lot of that to my medication which is why it hurts so much to see people belittle it.

Please, if you’re going to belittle mental health medication please read the personal experiences of people, like me, whose lives have changed for the better because of it.

– Rachel