I saw my psychiatrist yesterday to get him to fill out the disability declaration for student financial assistance since I'm going back to school in the fall and am trying to get assistance with funding for tuition.

The thing is, when I'm not in a depressive episode, I function pretty well, but when a bout of MDD hits, I don't, and I have regular recurrences of MDD. So I have kind of have mixed feelings about being labelled disabled.

This is the same Dr. that filled out the paperwork for me to get provincial disability benefits (ODSP) years ago, when I really wasn't capable of working, and I'm grateful to him that his report got me on them quickly at the first application. But the weird part is, I was declared permanently disabled right from day one, based on what he wrote which is unusual for mental health diagnosis. I'm still on ODSP even though I'm now working, as I'm only working part time and it's left me in a pretty good position to deal with my mental health while still feeling productive.

So this brings me to the disability declaration for school. Everyone I work with has been encouraging me to file the disability paperwork, for two reasons. One if I do go into a MDD episode I'll already have the paperwork in place and two with it, I'm eligible for a lot more grant money from the gov't instead of just getting loans.

So I got my Dr. to fill it out. It just felt weird when he told me he was checking off the classification of permanently disabled, and in his summary of how my daily life is affected. It sounded a lot worse to me, than how I feel it is on a daily basis.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy my Dr. was willing to fill it out in a way that favours me, but I don't know it just feels weird and kind of like I'm gaming the system because I'm pretty sure I can get through school without additional disability supports.