Stacy Hollingsworth EDISON – For teenagers receiving their driver’s licenses, it should be an exciting time in their lives.
However, for 24-year-old Stacy Hollingsworth, in hermind it was access to a lethal means to commit suicide.
“I went downstairs into the garage and took the car out without my parents knowing,” recalled Hollingsworth. “I was planning on never returning.”
As part of the Middlesex County College’s seventh annual DisabilityAwareness Day Hollingsworth recently spoke at the college about her 10-year battle with chronic, treatment-resistant depression.
“I drove for hours thinking of ways to die,” she said. “I thought of crashing the car into a ravine, but I also thought, What if I don’t die and become paralyzed? I would become worse off. Then I thought of crashing the car into a wall, but I also thought,What if I also hurt somebody in the process?”
Hollingsworth said at this point she felt hopeless. “I was not moving toward death, and was feeling excruciating pain,” she said. “I just cried my eyes out, and then I drove back home and pretended nothing had happened.”
Depression, according to the Psychology Information Online Web site, is one of the most common psychological problems affecting nearly everyone through either personal experience or through depression in a family member.
Each year, over 17 million American adults experience a period of clinical depression. Depression can interfere with normal functioning and frequently causes problems with work, social and family adjustment.
Once identified, most people diagnosed with depression are successfully treated. Unfortunately, depression is not always diagnosed, because many of the symptoms mimic physical illness, such as sleep and appetite disturbances. Nearly two-thirds of depressed people do not get proper treatment.
The 24-year-old said that along with her battle with depression, she also suffered from a binge eating disorder and an autoimmune disease.
Hollingsworth, a senior at Rutgers University inNew Brunswick, has devoted herself to initiatives within the mental health field.
At Rutgers, she founded the National Alliance onMental Illness [NAMI]-Rutgers, a student organization focusing on campus mental health issues, promoting early detection and intervention, providing support for students facingmental illness, reaching out to family members and friends of those who have mental illnesses, and combating the stigma surrounding psychiatric disorders. She has also testified at a New Jersey State Senate subcommittee meeting in favor of suicide prevention education in schools, has spoken to many audiences through conferences and workshops, and she has appeared in articles and on-camera interviews with The New York Times, mtvU,Half ofUs as part of amental health campaign, and other local and regional publications. She will be appearing in a PBS documentary later this year.
Hollingsworth’s battle with depression began when she was in middle school.
“I was around 12 or 13 years old…it did not happen overnight and I did not recognize what it was right away,” she said. “I just became tired and I did not feel like going out with my friends and do the activities that I loved to do anymore.”
Hollingsworth said there was nothing in her childhood growing up in Old Bridge that she could think of that triggered the depression.
“I had a wonderful childhood. I did well in school, was very active with dance and sports, and had a lot of friends…I was not abused,” she said. “I thought maybe I was stressed out and also thoughtmaybe it was just a phase of the terrible teen years.”
An incident in the summer before her freshman year in high school sent up a red flag in her mind.
“I started having suicidal thoughts,” she said. “I did some research on the Internet and self-diagnosed myself with depression. I did not tell my parents because I…knew they would blame themselves.”
Hollingsworth said it took her six years to get help, because in high school she thought that if she told people she had depression, it would be put in her transcripts.
“I was so concerned that it would preventme fromgetting into college,” she said. “That’s why support groups likeNAMI-Rutgers is so important, because I would have learned that if I went to counseling for my depression, it would be kept confidential. I have learned that depression does not label me, but it’s something that I have been dealing with and I have accepted it.”
Hollingsworth first reached out for help when she was a freshman at Rutgers University. “I was living in the engineering dorm suite with five girls and I remember we were a popular dorm suite because we were the few girls there,” she said. “One night, we had 10 people in our suite and I was feeling very suicidal. I was counting a lethal dose of pills. No one had noticed. Something inmymind toldme I should try one thing before I ended my life. I could always commit suicide later.
“There was a blizzard outside, and I shuttled over to the counseling center, and I was hospitalized for five days.
“I was so concerned what people would think, and I wanted to get out,” she said. “I called my parents every day and told them I was out at a study group. On the fourth day, the phones cut out andmy parents had calledmy dormand found out and immediately came to me. It was one of the worst days in my life …, but my parents have been such a great support team.”
With the help from her parents, Hollingsworth started experimenting with medications to see if they could help her depression. She had to miss two years of school.
“It took two years for me to find the medication that would work for me,” she said. “Everybody is different, and a drug that works for someone doesn’t necessarily mean it could work for someone else. I tried everything from acupuncture to shock treatment. I had to deal with all the side effects – from flu symptoms to heart palpitations. I suffered a hugememory loss from the shock treatment. I had to relearn names, numbers, and a lot of English. I also lost the memory of my whole vacation to Europe.”
Finally, Hollingsworth found the medication Parnate, an antidepressant, which has worked for her. She is back at Rutgers majoring in psychology andminoring in sociology. She recently received a national Mpower Award for her work in the mental health field. TheMpowerAward is given by the organization Musicians for Mental Health, a new youth awareness campaign that is harnessing the power of music to change youth attitudes about mental health and fight the stigma facing the one in five youths withmental health problems.
Hollingsworth said she is more open to talking about her battle with depression.
Students at MCC who are experiencing symptoms of depression or know someone who is suffering from depression can reach out to the Department of Counseling at MCC in room 100 in Edison Hall. All information will remain confidential.