MENTAL ILLNESS:
Thursday April 18, 2013
A story of struggle and strength
VOL . LIV, ISSUE 24
Sara Allaire’s true story
INSIDE
ALEXA MILANO Asst. News Editor HOT SPOTS NEAR CAMPUS, PAGE 10
CAVS’ CSAC STREAK, PAGE 14
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“I can’t even imagine my life having not attempted suicide.” Sophomore Sara Allaire saw her first therapist for anxiety when she was 8 years old. “Well I guess I’ve always had mental illness in my life because my aunt – she had schizophrenia – so when I was young I watched her go in and out of hospitals,” Allaire said. “Even if I didn’t know exactly what was going on I always knew what mental illness was and my parents had to educate me on it.” A rising issue in the world today, one out of every four people lives with a mental health disorder. Mental health disorders are anything from generalized anxiety disorder to OCD to schizophrenia. Currently, there are not cures to most mental illnesses. Allaire went back to therapy when she was in eighth grade for what was thought to be ADHD. In ninth grade, Allaire started self-harming for the first time. “At that point I was just cutting myself,” Allaire said. Allaire cut for some time but then she stopped for about six months because she didn’t want to let her parents down. However, because she wasn’t getting the help she needed, she started cutting again in places – like her legs – that her parents wouldn’t find. There are approximately two million cases of self-harm reported annually in the U.S. and females represent 60% of those who engage in the act of self-harm. Allaire didn’t revisit self-harm until she was a junior in high school. However, instead of cutting herself, the self-harm escalated to burning herself. “I would heat up a knife over the stove and then just stick it to my arm or leg. It sounds painful but it didn’t hurt at the time,” Allaire said. Junior year of high school was one of the low points in
Allaires’ life. “I started having mood swings where for two weeks at a time I would just be on top of the world and then I would just drop to extreme depression for months,” Allaire said. Because Allaire was so depressed the summer before her senior year of high school, she began her attempts at suicide. “Over the summer I started making suicide attempts with cutting but either my mom would walk in on it or my sister would bang on the bathroom door or something would happen that would stop me,” Allaire said. “And I kept doing it probably every two weeks until October of senior year.” Allaire noticed these mood swings during February of her junior year and these mood swings continued until October of her senior year. At a time when most students are looking at colleges and getting excited about what’s ahead, all Allaire wanted to do was quit. “I felt like I didn’t even have a future. And there’s all this pressure on me – because I was always in AP classes, honors classes, I was in National Honors Society and I never got anything less than a B – so there’s all this pressure on me to go to a good college and to do well and I just felt like I didn’t even want to be alive,” Allaire said. Depression is a dangerous thing and can make anyone feel like they’re powerless and out of control. About one in 10 children live with a serious mental or emotional disorder and two-thirds of people that successfully complete a suicide attempt are depressed at the time of their death. One person attempts suicide every 38 seconds. “So in October I took a bottle of sleeping pills,” Allaire said. “I texted my best friend kind of a goodbye text and I left a note and my best friend didn’t even hesitate and she called me and I didn’t answer so she called my parents.” Allaire took the sleeping pills in the bathroom and when her parents found out, SEE MENTAL ILLNESS, PAGE 8