Depression is the worst.

It makes you hate yourself and people around you. You’re tired all day, but can’t sleep a wink at night. You either don’t eat or gorge yourself on junk food. You have zero motivation to do anything, even the things you like. Some days you can’t even get out of bed.

Now imagine dealing with that while also taking 3 classes and working part time. Well, that’s my life. College and depression do not go well together and managing is getting harder and harder, because I don’t have access to resources I really need.

I, like many college students, am poor. I am living paycheck to paycheck and use loans to cover my housing costs. This isn’t uncommon, but becomes a serious issue when it stops me from getting treatment. I can’t afford transportation to a therapist’s office, let alone weekly or even monthly sessions.

I am aware UCF offers therapy through Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and I did go there for nearly two years. The problem with CAPS, though, is that they only offer short term therapy. Towards the end of my time there, my therapist would only talk about referring me to outside help, even though I explained to her a million times that wouldn’t be an option. I have been back a couple times for crisis counseling and every time they push me to find other help, their tones seemingly more and more antagonistic. I came across a similar issue with Psychiatry at the Health Center on campus. This semester they started charging twenty dollars an appointment. Because of the trial and error nature of medicating mental illnesses and the cost of the appointment plus medication, it just isn’t a viable option for me to keep going.

So, as of right now, I’m just not getting treatment, and my depression is hitting me full force.

This makes it really hard to keep up with school work. As the semester picks up, it gets harder and harder to get everything done until I'm frozen in fear of everything that I need to do. My life turns into a cycle of not doing my work because I'm depressed and anxious, letting the work pile up, then becoming more depressed and anxious because all the work I have to do until I start having nightly panic attacks. This cycle also makes going to class and participating feel impossible.

I have looked into Student Accessibility Services (SAS) to see how they might be able to help, but they have very little information on how they accommodate mental illnesses on their site. They did have a form to fill out if you need accommodations, but there wasn't anything about mental illness on it.

Depression in college is becoming more and more prominent. The good thing is that Universities are addressing it, but only on the surface. For those of us who need more than short term care and can't afford to go elsewhere are pretty much stuck. Schools should work on expanding resources to help mental illness, not take them away. I have worked harder than most to stay here, but I need more help than I've gotten. If UCF wants students to succeed, they need to put more into programs like CAPS and SAS and even the health center and take into account the realities of students living with depression.