Josh Ramsay on Mental Health

(This isn't a story btw, this is an actual interview Josh did in 2011 I think. I DO NOT own anything!)

Q: For people who don’t know your story, could you tell us a little about your past… List the things you dealt with?

Josh: For a long time, I dealt with depression, which I guess started pretty young for me… I don’t know exactly how old or anything, but at the latest, early teens I guess. That probably caused a lot of my other issues later in life really. Uh, my main issue, I think was my heroin addiction which lasted for about 2 years before I went to treatment for it. Umm, I also dealt with bulimia, and for a short period of time anorexia. 

Q: Wow, I didn’t realize you went through so much. Were your family and friends aware of all of this?

Josh: You’d be surprised how many people you probably know that are dealing with a lot of similar issues. If you don’t want people knowing, it’s easy enough to hide honestly, and I think that’s one of the main reasons so many people get stuck in these disorders, because no one can really tell until you’re in too deep.

Q: I guess that’s true. What was your family life like… Did your home life cause any of your problems do you think?

Josh: No, my family is actually really supportive and loving. A lot of people have these stories of like, abuse and stuff, and that causes their problems, and then a lot of people have great lives and family and friends and still end up with issues. It’s just the makeup of your brain I guess.

Q: That makes sense. So which of your problems I guess we’ll call them, came first?

Josh: like I said, my depression I think started when I was really young. ‘Cause it has to do with chemical imbalances in the brain, so it’s not like you can gain depression… You either have it or you don’t, it just depends when it’s going to start affecting you. So that was first, and shortly after I started to be affected by it… feeling it anyway, I started self-harming. 

Q: Self-harming as in cutting yourself, yeah? 

Josh: Yeah. I think I forgot to list that at the beginning, sorry. 

Q: No problem. Self-harming is a big problem in teens nowadays, would you agree?

Josh: Yeah, from what I see, there are so many kids doing it now, it’s really sad. It can really mess you up, because you start to believe you deserve it, and no one really deserves that. 

Q: So why do people do it? Could you tell us a bit about why you did… what it did for you?

Josh: Umm, *laughter*. Yeah, sorry. I don’t know, I guess uh, for me anyway, my depression kind of made me feel really, trapped I guess, and I was always dealing with this emotional pain, and the cutting was kind of just a release of all that. It kind of made it leave my internal, and made it external, which I thought was a lot easier to deal with. 

Q: Because it made the pain physical?

Josh: Exactly. I’m glad you were able to decipher that mess of an explanation! 

Q: So, what came next? Did anyone find out about your depression and self-harm before anything else happened?

Josh: Umm, no, I kept that a secret for a long time. I don’t know how long it was after I started that, but I began to have like, body issues. I thought I was fat, and it’s not like I was the skinniest person ever, but looking back now, I know I wasn’t that much bigger than anyone else. At the time though, I felt I was, so I stopped eating. Well, like… I would eat, just not enough, and I lost quite a bit of weight off that, but then I’d start to eat regularly again, cause I couldn’t stand being hungry all the time, and I’d gain all the weight back. It was just a big yo-yo diet and it made me feel worse about myself.