Welcome back to another one of my collaboration series. This time I am collaborating with a mental health survivor from South Africa. Zoe and myself are collaborating on the topic of depression and how it affects people.

If you wish, you can watch our video below.

From the video Zoe explains how some people perceive what depression is like. The can be a lot of misunderstandings regarding how depression can affect someone. Both Zoe and myself agreed that there is a lot of stigma regarding depression. Zoe explains that some people think that it is possible to just snap out of depression or just put a happy face on. The damage caused from such views can lead to further isolation of sufferers of depression.

Zoe also explains how she came about to suffer from depression. Unfortunately depression struck her at a young age and she is still finishing off her studies now. What made depression even more difficult to cope with is that there was minimal mental health support at school, although I am not sure what the mental health system is like in South Africa, but there are problems trying to be addressed over in the UK.

Both Zoe and myself explain in the video that it is vital to seek help if you feel the signs of depression coming on. This is not so easy to do as many of us experience low mood from time to time. The difficulty is fighting self denial or relizing that the symptoms are more than just low mood.

I hope when you get the time, you can check out Zoe Valerie’s mental health YouTube Channel. I hope this blog post has been a helpful lesson. See you next time and have a good mental health journey.