Video Transcription

How Jasmine dealt with anxiety and depression at high school

My name is Jazmin. I’m 19 years old, and I live in Frenchs Forest.

My journey began when I started high school and went into Year 7. It was a really big change for me. During the first year at that school, I started to experience what I now know was anxiety. It started to really trouble me, and I didn’t know how to speak to anyone about it because I’d never been taught how to reach out. The struggles I was having, which I couldn’t identify, led me to become quite sad and depressed.

A few of my friends started to ask if I was okay, and a couple of teachers did too. It was actually during a conversation with one of my teachers—who let me know that she was concerned about me and had noticed some changes in me—that things began to change. She said she noticed I wasn’t smiling as much anymore and seemed really tired. I explained that I hadn’t been able to sleep because of worrying over and over.

She suggested that I look at a website called ReachOut that she’d heard about and knew other students had used. It had helped them, and so that’s when things started to turn around for me.

It was a massive relief to find these resources and realize that what I was going through was normal, that it happens to other people, and that there were people like me. That’s when I started to find ways to get help.

My journey didn’t end there. I still struggled with depression and anxiety, and it went on for a little while. But from the time I first pulled up one of ReachOut’s fact sheets, read about the forums, and learned that it’s okay to feel this way, I never felt completely alone.

Video by Reach Out