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www.insideHALTON.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, November 23, 2011 · 18 Depression is an illness, ll not the h essence of f a person Continued from page 7 Soon after a break up with a boyfriend, rumours began to swirl and again she began losing friends. "I couldn't understand it. I felt like, why can't I mesh with the people who are in my area and the same age? Why can't I fit? Am I that different? No one accepts me," she said. By the second semester in the new school, she began struggling with her grades again. By Grade 10 she said she developed an eating disorder and the already petite girl weighed only 90 pounds. She thought things would improve in time and, as a coping mechanism for her depression, put bad thoughts away in an imaginary box on a shelf. The box soon filled and in Grade 11, Rita was hospitalized after contemplating suicide. 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"I didn't want to give people what they wanted," she said of deciding to return home, "that I was the weird girl, that I never meshed and I never would so I took the easy way out. I don't like to give people the satisfaction that I failed." She was taken to a nearby hospital and stayed there through the weekend and released on the following Monday as a low-risk case. By this time, she was cutting herself and, later that same school year, overdosed on pills at home. She was taken to hospital, this time as a serious case. She believes she was treated poorly in hospital and was then institutionalized for a month and a half with others in similar situations. When she returned home, she learned she could not complete her schoolwork to pass the semester, so it had to be repeated. That summer she tried to make up a lost credit with a school program abroad. During the trip, she told her friend about her experience with depression. Soon after other students found out and then the school administration did too. Though she had the go-ahead and the recommendation of doing this school program from her psychiatrist, she was forced out of the course and returned home. "So many people are so scared when they hear the world depression they think this person is going to kill themselves right now, right next to me," she said. Throughout her journey with www. .com mental illness, she said she has been called many things. "You're being called crazy, being told you're a problem, that you are just putting on a show, you're just acting like this because you want to," she said through tears. "No one wants to be depressed. No one wants to try to kill themselves. Being told that, I don't understand it. It shouldn't happen." She said mental illness cannot be ignored. She said she has witnessed depression at every single school she's attended and, yet, it is swept under the rug. "It doesn't happen to just a small group of people," she said. "It happens every day, but no one talks about it because they don't want to be labelled crazy. That's why people don't talk about it, but people need to talk about it." She said having a mental illness is not the person's fault -- not of their choosing. "Stigma is still there. I want to change that. As soon as people hear mental health issues -- red flag," she said. "People have the stigma or fear, but they also choose to be ignorant because they're so scared. They don't want to learn about it." She said the road to change is not just through children, but through parents and the entire family. Children learn from their parents, she explained. Rita is much better now, but admits she is still a work in progress. "I want people to know, if they meet me -- ask anyone I know -- I'm a happy person. I am myself. Depression isn't me," she said. "I'm still planning my life. 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