Please help. I'm in a very stressful situation right now.

In previous post I mentioned I was misdiagnosed with mental illness and detained in hospital for about 20 days many years ago. It was my worst life time. I came from a developing country. Some people spread out this news in my neighbourhood and even in community. Many people including my neighbours and relatives looked at me differently. I came to Canada for studying and now working. It might be a news for them to gossip about me. I feel stressful to see people treated me like a freak. There is a roommate girl I met this month in a city in Canada. She happened to be from my hometown. In the beginning I was a little cautious because of my situation. Later I talked a lot to her about my studying and working. A few days ago she suddenly changed to scare about me. She didn't look at me, and keep away from me extremely. I had a bad feeling she might know my situation, she might heard from her friends in my hometown. Later all other roommates scared about me, treated me like a freak, one day I came back from work. They didn't talk to me, and suddenly went back their room and locked it when they saw me... They didn't come to kitchen to cook when I was there. I was so stressed and anxious, and moved away to a new rent. Mental stigma and being hospitalized are so damaging to one's social life. I was suffered extreme anxiety because of that. As I mentioned to my mother, no matter what best friends one has, as long as they heard about mental hospital thing, they will be gone. Now I worried about social communication especially in my workplace, since I mentioned her lots of detail of my job and company, and I even suggested her about this type of job before. Stigma is killing, I suffered too much, but I couldn't talk to anyone what my suffering, except my mom who is in my home country.

Hi, welcome to the forum

I left a link in "living with mental illness" section so more people can give input.


I am sorry this happened, I really am.

I understand what you are saying, tremendous stigma exists around mental illness. People judge or become afraid. Its wrong, all a person needs is support, not being put down more. Its makes people feel worse not better, and if anything you need the most social contact.

The key is finding the right people, people who understand. People like that do exist but it takes the time to find them. Find something you love, don't stress it and I think it will become easier. This is a good place to start, I think you will get good replies to this thread.

I couldn't accept the fact that I've been put into a mental hospital. I feel it's my "dark secret", when I communicate with others. I worried it could been revealed, and others would be scared away, which is plausible. That makes me stress. If some thing related with mental illness is mentioned in a conversation (such as crazy, mad, weird..) like many psychiatrists try to potrait. I will feel sudden nervous. That affects my communication with others badly. I am suffering, but I can't mention anything to others.

I think it would be better for you to first accept it. It's not your fault you were put there.

I agree with psycho113, none of this is your fault. It happened at no fault of your own. I think one of things that might be holding you back, or at least something that held me back, was that it felt like no one wanted to believe or wanted to listen. Fortunately I have found that many people here had similar experiences which makes for really good constructive threads. I can assure you without a doubt countless people have been through similar experiences. I think being able to share how you feel while being heard (without bias) is essential to healing, if not just feeling a bit better .