Most of us know someone who has dealt with an eating disorder or self-harm. Rates of depression in teenagers are on the rise. For many young people, the lines between dieting and anorexia, sadness and depression, bad days and bad months are becoming unnervingly blurred.

This summer, the Children’s society published a study that said 1 in 4 teenagers in the UK are frequently depressed (although far fewer are properly diagnosed). The average age for the first signs of depression is now 14. Half a century ago, it was almost 30. Over the next three years the government plan is to spend over £40 million pounds on ‘young peoples’ sense of well-being.’

Yet the world of mental health is still a mystery for most teenagers. Last year, a GOSH survey found 46% of 12 to 18-year-olds were unable to name a single mental health condition. A ‘mental institution’, for many, still conjures images of straightjackets and padded cells.

Madeline Simpson is 16-years-old and lives in East London. A passionate performer, dancer and actress, she’s one of the most eloquent teenagers you’re ever likely to meet. At the beginning of this year she spent six months at Brookside Adolescent Mental Health Unit.
Here she speaks to Platform about her depression, her experiences of Brookside and her outlook on mental illness.

The following is a combination of quotes from interviews with and articles written by Madeline Simpson. Other names have been changed to protect identities.

When I was 15 I had a huge break-up with a boyfriend, which really messed me up. Afterwards, I lost a lot of friends. I became sort of hollow. I started alienating myself. People left me, and I was left with no one. I wasn’t getting on with my parents.

I got really bad – left to my own devices. For my last year at school I wasn’t doing any work. I’d just sit on the floor and mumble to myself. And if another teacher came in and said, ‘What is that girl doing?’ my teacher would just say, ‘Don’t bother her, that’s just Maddi.’

I could have risen above the break-up. I could have seen as it as good thing. But instead, I let myself get low down. I gave in to what was happening inside my head. I ended up depressed.

In moments of sadness or despair, we’ve all claimed to be ‘depressed’. We tend to use this word as a generic term for feeling low. Sometimes, though, our feelings of melancholy are a manifestation of unipolar disorder (major depression) or even bipolar disorder (manic depression).

Depression is a disease. It’s completely paralysing. There have been days, weeks even, that I’ve been completely bed-ridden. As if I’d had my leg amputated. It’s hard to get on with your life, even to do simple things like take a shower or have breakfast.

After two years of depression and keeping my eating disorder a secret, I was admitted to Brookside Adolescent Mental Health Unit in January 2008. Brookside is one of the best NHS mental health units in London and specialises in dealing with young people.

I was an emergency admittance and was taken straight through to short stay – a smaller part of the unit, with higher security.

On one of my first nights, I smashed up my room because I thought there was someone in there, hiding from me. I trashed everything trying to find them, which led to a few more people in the unit kicking off. No one got any sleep that night.

At that time I really hated my parents, which was horrid. I thought it was nice to be away from them.

I was worried that I was putting on too much weight – I didn’t want to go above six stone.

I’m always hearing things. They call them auditory hallucinations. They’re really evil. When I’m walking sometimes, things like that still happen now, I feel like people are pushing up too close behind me. And I’ll turn around and there’s no one there. It’s so unsettling. It gets your heart pumping.

This is going to sound’¦odd, but when that does happen I can sort of taste fear in the back of my throat. I can feel my heart beating in my neck. It’s terrifying.

Two weeks after I arrived, I met Ella. She is two years older than me, and came up and spoke to me as soon as she got the chance. We had a lot in common, and we soon became our own little clique.

If you can really connect with someone, like I did with Ella, then it’s amazing. We’ll be friends for life. We shared the same kind of problems and that connected us.

For a while we were quite naughty, we use to skip lunch together and hide in each other’s rooms.

But we soon started to help each other, especially at lunchtimes. We’d make each other eat two sticks of carrot, two sticks of cucumber and two pieces of red pepper.

I remember one instance; I had just rushed to the bathroom and thrown up. Ella was knocking on the door, crying. She was disappointed in me. That hurt, but it really helped me.

We were just always there for each other and we completely understood each other.

Having close friends to talk to helped, but seeing my therapist was different. She didn’t judge, she didn’t patronize and she never flinched. I could tell her all kinds of horrible things that I had been thinking or doing and she would just listen.

She was an incredibly beautiful, successful woman. Yet she didn’t think any less of me when I was telling her awful things. I completely trusted her.

I was a resident for around 3 months, and after that a day patient. That meant I was in from 9am until 4pm. Of that time as a resident, it is the nights of mischief that I will always remember. Being inside all day made us all hyperactive. We would sit in front of the TV not really watching, but talking loudly to annoy the staff, having pillow fights or playing loud music and dancing on the pool table.

One night, I came across a huge box of Lego. I was ecstatic. I began to build a house, and Ella joined in with me. We colour-coordinated it; it was perfect. I kept it in my room for my whole stay. We didn’t care that we were acting like children, the Lego made us happy. And you can find happiness in the strangest of places at Brookside.

That’s not to say everyone takes a positive approach to Brookside. One incident I found truly disgusting was a trade in razor blades.

It turned out that a day patient was bringing them in and selling them to the residents for a pound each. She was discharged from the unit immediately because you’re really not allowed to do that. It really upset me, especially when I heard that my friends had gotten some from her. Of course I was looking for a way to harm myself, but buying a razor from a friend with the intention of hurting oneself just seemed sick and wrong to me.

I’ve just started on a new course of anti-depressants. I came off Prozac because it just wasn’t working. I’m now taking a stronger drug, which should help but I’m not sure because I’m in the first few weeks of taking it, and antidepressants take a while to work properly.

For the most part, though, Brookside was a safe house. I’m not sure if it made my mental state better but it certainly calmed it down. It set my life at my own pace. I left, after six months treatment, of my own accord. I wanted to carry on with my life.

The people I met there will stay with me forever, some truly always in my heart. That is what I found at Brookside. Sanctuary, friendship, help and a way forward.

Next week we speak to those in the medical profession about the state of adolescent mental health.