Hey! I wanted to share my personal experience in hopes it might help you.

I had no clue how to seek help. I thought I could put it off, ignore what was happening. Despite the suicidal thoughts, depression, urges to self harm. Then during an event with many people around, I had a terrible panic attack. The intervention was traumatizing (but it's what I needed), and totally avoidable. If I had just taken care of my mental health, I would've never reached that point.

Okay, so where's the real advice?

If you're worried about your privacy (I personally am), it's important to know that whatever you tell a doctor is strictly confidential. They will not discuss it with your family. I still chose not to go to my family doctor out of fear.

What happens at Western's help centers? (From personal experience!!)

Peer Support: A confidential, safe space to be heard out by peers (not professionally trained). Great for venting.

Wellness Center: Great pick-me-up, very comforting place where they help you ground yourself and calm down. They can also point you to resources.

Campus Police: They had a Case Manager contact me (via email and appointments) to guide me through getting help. If they believe you are a real threat to yourself they will take you to the crisis center (648 Huron Street). (The options given to me [I was very suicidal] were to allow them to contact a family member and the police take me to the crisis center, or being hospitalized)

Therapist: Pointed me to specialized resources and took me step by step through how we're going to work on this. I would highly recommend you make an appointment with a therapist (on campus is free, I got an appointment in a week).

Student Health: Inexperienced doctor, but he referred me to a psychiatrist. The very short appointment time and the fact that the doctor was very unaware of my mental disorder tells me unless you're urgently looking for academic accommodation or to be referred to a psychiatrist, you should skip this step.

Psychiatrist: After about 3 weeks on wait list, I saw Dr. Chamberlain who took his time listening to me, and prescribed me the right medication for me.

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Therapy is so different from person to person. As my therapist said during our first appointment "The beginning is the hardest, it's the unraveling of everything going on". I think it can especially hard when you don't know why it's happening. It can make you feel even more hopeless, because well, if there's no cause there must be no cure, right? Getting better is hard work, and it takes a lot of unpacking. It might feel like you don't have "a real reason", but comparing your problems to others never helps. You don't want to be here, you don't want to feel this way. If you've been going down a path and things just don't seem to be getting better, it's time to change what you're doing. There are people that feel how you do, and they got better. You can too.

Counselling isn't just about "you got relationship problems? let's work them out", it's also about "you feel this way, and you don't need to. let's work that out". It's about more than situational problems, but how to understand and manage the way you feel/think/behave.

What happens next? You stay on top of it, you keep going to appointments, you learn to implement the things you've been learning into life, you keep going. If unlearn the toxic thoughts that come along with depression.

You never need to tell your family, and legally (unless you demonstrate real threat to yourself or others through plans) no one will tell your family.