Hello
Author
I'm Catherine, I'm twenty and I currently study in Leeds. I started Disability: Depression because I knew very little about mental health conditions being disabilities until I found out from my university I could get disability support and funding for my anxiety and depression.
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Growing up I thought that having a mental illness as a disability meant the person affected would be confined to a dark bedroom for the rest of their life. My experiences taught me I couldn't be further from the the truth.
After starting university, doing a subject I adored and making some amazing friends in the process I developed mental health problems that began to dictate my day to day life. After a painful year of trying to shake this illness therapists were starting to tell me I needed to come to
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accept that I might not be well any time soon. Hearing this wasn't easy, I spent my first year of university trying various therapies and medication rather than partying my way through without a care in the world. It was at this time I got told to apply for Disabled Student's Allowance.
Again, this was not an easy process. I'm not disabled enough. I'm stealing funding from those who need it. What if it turns out I'm well in no time at all? Since when even was depression a disability? Having this label of being disabled was isolating, our healthcare system seems to view most mental illness as a short term problem. The standard response of medical professionals was something along the lines of "here have some pills and some therapy and see me again in a month or so". It felt very isolated.
So, of course, at this point I turned to the internet. Googling phrases such as "disability depression" and "mental health disabilities" got me only as far as discovering there is a strong positive correlation between physical disabilities and mental illness. Even with awareness of hidden disabilities rising, the spotlight is on physical hidden disabilities; society needs to accept mental illnesses as stand alone disabilities. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide but many are not even aware it is a disability.
Why do I care so much? If I hadn't been able to realise I can identify as disabled I wouldn't have been able to access the support I needed to get through university. That, and no one should feel ashamed of identifying as disabled or feel they are inadequate or an intruder as a result. Like most students I worry about how I will cope after university, yet I have to account for employers not giving me the support I need or simply not wanting to employ me because of my disabilities. When I leave university I want to enter a working world that respects my disabilities and doesn't discriminate against me. I don't want to have to keep feeling I am living a lie by having to hide my disabilities for fear of discrimination. Living with a disability is hard enough as it is without the shame and fear of disclosing it to others.
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I am part of the project Scope for Change, a project with the amazing disability charity Scope. This year thirteen young disabled people are running their own campaigns about disability. Whilst meeting and talking to the other campaigners, who have a wide range of disabilities, I came to realise a lot of the struggles we faced were very similar despite our different disabilities; every other campaigner accepted and supported me: something I very much feared would not happen. I am no longer ashamed to say I am disabled, it describes my illness and how my day to day life is affected by it. I wish society would accept it and change to make this world more accessible for everyone who is disabled.
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