0:00  
When I was in grade eight, that's when it began. Now I'm first year student, so it's been a while.

0:14  
I've been suffering from depression and anxiety for about, like five years now. And I've seen it, like progressively get worse, as the years went on. Like, I'll wake up in the morning and I'll feel like, I'll be really depressed. I'll be really upset and very unmotivated. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to get out of bed. Sometimes I'll like just cry, or I'll think like, what's the point? I'll get ready and I usually won't eat either, so I'll just like maybe make like an iced cap or something.

1:04  
And then I'm a commuter, so then, like one and a half hours I'll get here to downtown, Then I'll attend my classes and then after that, I usually don't want to go home for some reason. And it's not like there's anything bad, I just like, I also have this thing where it's like time's running out all the time. So I wanted to spend time with like all these friends and do all these different things, because I feel like there's no time. Anxiety, it really messes me up in like different settings, because I like actually identify myself as a very outgoing person and like, people wouldn't think I do suffer from it. There are times when like, I thought it was getting better, or I felt like happier. It would kind of be like extreme highs and extreme lows. So it'd be like, I get euphoric, and then I'd be like, oh I'm like cured and like I don't need treatment. I don't need therapy. And I would tell my friends I'd be like, oh I'm like better like don't have to worry about me and everything. And then like a week later, I'm like, back to the same thing. Like high school there was like the guidance counselors would help me out. And then I went into like a more professional setting. I took like stomach pills because my eating got all messed up. And then like I used to overdose on pills, so then it like, it really messed up my stomach, because I would take like expired pills. There are times like I attempted suicide so I was hospitalized. Whenever I'm really really sad and like especially suicidal, I completely isolate myself. I'll shut down and I won't not let people know like, oh I was self harming or trying to kill myself until later on. I went to see some counselors, but that didn't last very long, because I did not like to set up. I think it's weird if you, you know, you're like suicidal, but you only go see somebody once a week, for one hour. It's like, okay, what am I doing the rest of the time, you know, I didn't find it like good practice, I didn't like the way it was so structured. But there was a lot of things I had to kind of like, let go of. Like, there's like a group of high school friends that I decided to leave when I went to university and that was like, a hard and long process. It was necessary for my mental health. I met like a lot of different people in university and engaged in like new events and different communities. So I found like, people were more accepting here, and not as judgmental.

4:11  
So my name is Enugh Simony and I'm a third year nursing student here at Ryerson. I'm also the president of SMASH, which is students mental awareness of support and health. And that's a student group run by students, for students to promote wellness and mental health care on campus. For me, one of the biggest, biggest factors of my wellness was having support in my family and my friends. So essentially having that peer support. So that's what really drove me to have a passion to create not to create an organization, but to sustain an organization that focuses on peer support. This is my story is an intentional platform where we share lived experiences. So our lived experience essentially, is anything that you've gone through. And I've learned so much about, not just the functionalities of this organization, but also about self care and empathy and pure support. And I've learned that through connecting and collaborating with others. And based on the feedback that I received from these amazing students is that they've also had that effect.

5:11  
Do you think it's just great to have like, an area where like, you can speak to somebody because there's so many people who lack like support systems.

5:26  
You can overcome it, it's not that you can't. And I think people, even if they're struggling, like they can still learn to love themselves with their mental illness. You can also just be more grateful, like, sometimes I'll be really low and I'll, but then when I become like, stabilized, I'll become so grateful.