How old were you when you first had symptoms of a mental illness?

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I was displaying symptoms from when I was about 6yrs old but 1st saw a psychiatrist when I was 12 and first went on meds at 18...

I was in the womb. I was an embryo. Hahahah...

I had my 1st panic attack at age 17 and things just spiraled from there. I was officially diagnosed at 17.

Looking back, I am sure I could have had some type of anxiety disorder as a child.

My first suicide attempt was at age 11.

The social awkwardness / lack of friends / poor self-esteem goes back to as young as I can remember.

Well, when I was 5 and I fell backwards off a swing. I had to go to the hospital and they actually had to strap me down to the crib. Then they stuck a huge plastic dome over the top because I was being so destructive.
I started therapy at 6, but was too out of control for the T so that stopped.
Then I got sent away at 12 to group homes and foster homes as I was uncontrollable.

Just about 2 years ago I found out I am Bipolar.... Soooo....my whole life.

BJ

In retrospect I can now see that I had anxiety issues my entire life. I wasn't diagnosed until I was in my 20's.

Cyran0

I didn't realize I had anxiety until I was about 43. I had suffered situational depression for a number of years...on and off as life handed me some pretty crappy things to deal with. Looking back, I can see where I had some emotional issues as far back as about 9yrs old. I'm pretty sure most of the problems were anxiety based.


sabby

I had a normal life & had myself a very together person. I was a rebel for my time.....but I was always strong minded & wouldn't let people pressure me into doing anything I felt was wrong for me. When I got married, that strong mindedness probably caused many of the problems that existed, & sadly, I didn't listen to that little voice inside of me that told me not to get married.....but there was nothing strong minded that was really telling me not to....it was a just sorta kinda.

I would always dive into everything I was doing completely.....I would spend so much time that when I would finish, I would be exhausted & take a few days break to recover....that was how I worked in college, & during my career as an aerospace communications firmware engineer. It wasn't until I moved into my last house when I found out what burn out was all about. We had to move into an apartment because our house wasn't completed when our other house sold.....so some stuff was in storage & living out of boxes for 6 months. Then came the move & I had knee problems that I needed to have my knee reconstructed....major surgery....1 month of cast, 3 months of crutches & no weight on the leg.....6 months of physical therapy 3 days a week & since I was pushing myself (like usual) so I could be back doing down hill skiing within that 6 months for my vacation, I was working the other 4 days on doing my own physical therapy for several hours a day. The day we moved into our new house July 4, my husbands brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. I was trying to handle all this & work 70 hours a week. Then that air force contract was cancelled & I was laid off. That was the first time I realized that I was capable of feeling burn out because when I got a job offer, I actually turned it down because I was just too exhausted & knew I wouldn't do well on a new job feeling the way I was feeling.....& there is always a new job....which there was after I gave myself a longer break.

I got my career back on track within a few months.....with a few struggles, but it was going well & back to the 70 hour weeks & pushing (why would I ever learn from my mistakes when I didn't think they were a mistake???). So....everything went well for about 5 years until my career finally fell apart. The project was over that I was working on & there wasn't anything in the company that I felt ok about doing.....the only thing that showed up, looked like it might be a different path...it turned out being nothing but a glorified secretarial position....& for a techincal person......that was really a come down for me. I gave it 6 months & hated every minute of the job. But like my normal self, I did the job so well, they wouldn't let me go back to technical when one came up. One of the things we had to do was put together a presentation for the national convention that was being held. I took all the buzz words in the area I was working in & threw all the BS I could come up with together & I couldn't believe it.....my presentation was accepted. All I was doing was sitting in my office & crying all day...coming out & doing the job I had to do & going back to the privacy of my office to fall apart when I realized how trapped I was (sadly, my experience had become outdated in other companies, so just changing companies wasn't an option either). This was around Thanksgiving & I was struggling to get by until Christmas break, praying that I could get through my burnout. Well, the first of the year came & the burnout didn't go away, so I kept calling in sick. Then the 1994 earthquake hit in Northridge California. That collapsed the freeway I used to take to work. I lived 1 1/2 hours from work in the first place & that just made it take 6 hours. I off & on ride shared with my neighbor who worked at the same company. We were on the road sometims 12 hours a day. They forced me to come into work & take a lunch hour on top of that. That added up to 21 hours our of 24 hours....3 hours to sleep, so I continued to call in sick as much as possible....until I finally went to my GP & she put me on medical leave of absense with horrible anxiety attacks that I just couldn't deal with.

Who would have ever thought that within a year, I would become suicidal for years & would be in & out of mental hospitals & then the migraines hit which took over 24/7. The suicide attempts lasted for about 4 years & the pain & neck fusion continued after that until around 2003 when I found a pain specialist who was willing to prescripe a level of meds that controlled the pain. During that time, they wanted me to get into doing things that I wanted in my life....so I got back into doing my dressage riging & got my first horse & then I also got into my american eskimo dogs & showing & breeding them. Even with all of these wonderful things, I couldn't seem to find the real meaning of my life. My marriage that was since 1975 was horrible & I left after 1 hospitalization....came back to my own part of the house.

It wasn't until 2003 that I finally started getting bits of my life together & decided to go back to school & take some classes I enjoyed. My husband had lost his job at that time but that didn't make being with him any easier. Then my Mother ended up with cancer & everything else fell apart...but it was finally at that time even when I was then dealing with anorexia & PTSD from that, that I finally started getting my life together & with the move to Kentucky & leaving my husband has really helped with all my symptoms. I still get anxiety attacks, but can usually sleep them off....sometimes it takes a few days, but they go away without having to take meds now. I am using a high dose of Omega 3 for depression, but I wasn't having depression issues anyway, so figure it's just good for my health. I have dr appointments & my blood pressure is right on.....considering the anger & have been going through with my husband, it sound have been high, not normal.

I have run the circle of emotions & symotoms since 1994. I have experiences feelings & situations I never would have dreamed could have ever happened in my life. It seems that my symptoms & mental health issues much have been situational & seem to continue showing up with situations since they never existed in my life before the situation & now that I am getting my life together & finding that coming back to my Christianity has made the complete difference in my feelings. I finally have a free feeling compaired to the prison I was in for those years.

Debbie

<font color="purple">I would saaay, I was about 7 when I started becoming depressed, but I've been a very weird kid my whole life if that counts. </font>

I was nineteen years old, had just headed off to Michigan State University, when I experienced numerous signs that I had E.S.P..............no one believed me and put me in a mental hospital.....I swear, those signs were REAL!! Frightenly, real. I had been skipping classes too and was incredibly homesick too, not for my family but for my high school friends....to this day I miss high school.........

I was in my late 20's and officially diagnosised in my early 30's..
Snow

When I was really young like four and five I was convinced if a car got behind our family car when we we're coming home at night that they where stalking us and going to kill us. There are numerous things through out my childhood like I would talk to my imaginary friends and avoid other kids. Just little things like that my whole life, I was always really shy and akward around kids my age when I was little.

Then at 13 I started having anxiety problems, depression, and I started to self injure.

At 15 I was in a car wreck with my grandmother that killed her and I still have problems with flashbacks and I'll avoid anything that reminds me of it..I can't even say her name because it triggers so many memories and fills me with panic..and panic leads to self injury.

So basicly my whole life has been plagued with problems with Parinoa, Anixety, and Deppression. I've never been diagnoised with anything because I've only been to a thearpist once and that was because my parents forced me..I'm trying to find one though on my own accord so I can figure all of this out.

I was raped when I was 4...but wasn't diagnosed till about age 12/13 when I was first hospitalized for cutting.

Hmmm... When I was a sperm and an egg still?

I always remember being withdrawn, lonely, depressed, anxious....constantly disassociating. I wonder if it was the abuse and the circumstances that caused it or if it was the mental illness. My first suicide attempt was at age 11.

Not that I'm necessarily a text book diagnosis...idk, but the situation at that time in life (12 years old) was my Mom abandoned my sister and I, then I became angry and out of control....a drug addict. Still to this day I have feelings probably derived off that event in my life.....I'm just as ill, just not clinically diagnosed.

I started self injuring when i was about 10, and if my father had been sober enough to notice, I definitely needed help as a teenager - I was just lucky to have good counselling at school. Held it together mainly through dissociation until hitting 29 when I started seeing T. It's been a hell of a ride ever since.

--splitimage

I was self injuring (biting myself) at five or six. By the time I was nine, I had decided that it wasn't worth it to try to have friends because it hurt to much to lose them when we moved. I remember writing a letter to my best friend at 9 years old saying that all the color had gone out of my world. I didn't trust anybody at that point. I was suspicious of other kids and thought they were going to embarass me, tease me, pick on me, if not physically hurt me like the bullies did from ages 6-9.

ermmm...not sure i should own up to this...makes me feel like a freak...i was seriously dissociating by two years old...like totally not there to the point i could "come back" later to find serious injuries but no memory of the abuse.

is that classed as a symptom of mental illness? and if so does that make me really weak, pathetic or just a freak like i feel?

KJ - no that is classified as a really creative coping skill.
I also started dissociating and switching...at three. Prior to that i had attachment disorders with both parents.
Acting out started around 4 and mom was taught to pin me to a wall until i told her she was the boss... I started repeating the abuse that was happing to myself at age 6 and depression hit by 7 which was when i started realizing i had the power to kill myself if (rather when) i wanted and though about it daily from then to now. Different forms of self injury started around 9 which didn't turn into cutting until 28.

((((Kiya)))) i never thought of it as a creative coping skill before...and thanks for sharing your story...i'm sorry all those bad things happened to you.

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Kalamity_Jane said:

((((Kiya)))) i never thought of it as a creative coping skill before...and thanks for sharing your story...i'm sorry all those bad things happened to you.

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you, too, babe!!

I showed signs of ADHD in kindergarten but didn't get diagnosed with that until an adult. The other stuff I would have to say started show some signs in early junior high.

Jbug

I started experiencing depression when I hit puberty, rather young in my case 11.

For the frist 10 years of my life I rarey talked I spent most of my time by my self now that I look back I was a very sad little kid and all i ever felt was ALONE