Helping yourself:

Get smart
Find out more about mental health and mental illness.
The websites and resources listed on this site are a good place to start.

Talk it out
Don’t keep your mental health problems to yourself. Share your worries and fears with someone you trust. Get as much help as you can. Use your parents, teachers, guidance counsellors, doctors as resources to get the help you want.

Don’t blame yourself
None of this is your fault. Having mental health problems doesn't mean that you are weak or a failure. It doesn’t mean that you aren't trying. Whatever the cause, the important thing is to get help.

Keep active
As much as you can, try to stick with your usual activities, in terms of both academics and leisure. Keeping your mind occupied and your day structured will help you recover and feel good about yourself.

Find an advocate, or be your own.
Advocacy is all about supporting and helping people to:

• express their ideas and concerns
• get the information and services they need
• defend and promote their rights and responsibilities
• explore their choices and options.

Having a mental health problem can mean that your opinions and ideas are not taken seriously, or that you are not offered the opportunities and choices you would like.Having an advocate might help you to get the kinds of help you need to continue and succeed in school, like special accommodations and supports. (link to accommodations section). An advocate could be a parent, a teacher, a guidance counsellor, a mental health professional, or someone else who cares about you.

Being your own advocate is about speaking up for yourself and making your views and wishes clear. This can be very difficult to do at times, especially when you’re trying to deal with your illness. But once you’re starting to feel more stable and like you know what works for you, you want to take on more of a self-advocacy role.

Take care
There are things that you can do to try to make sure that you stay well:

Keep track of your moods and symptoms, and try to notice what kinds of things set you off

Eat well, get plenty of sleep and stay physically active

Avoid using alcohol and drugs. They definitely make things worse, and can be especially dangerous when combined with certain medications.

Keep in touch with friends and try to get out of the house

Be consistent with your therapies – including taking prescribed medications, and attending counselling.

Join a support / self-help group
Self-help groups support and educate people who have mental health problems, as well as their families and friends. There are many advantages to getting involved with self-help/support groups:

a chance to talk about your feelings and experiences with others who have “been there”

a chance to use your own experience to be helpful to others by giving as well as receiving practical coping advice and support

a chance to learn more about your illness/problem.

Have a look in the links/resources section for some ideas on how to find self-help groups in your area.

Don’t give up
Getting the help you need and finding the right combination of therapies can take a while, but it’s definitely worth the wait. You will probably have to be persistent and patient.

Things may be pretty crazy for a while, and they may even get really bad before they get better. But remember, people recover from mental illness. Do everything that you can to help yourself recover, and give it time.

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