Okay. I'm Henry.
Hi. My name is Page, I'm 16.
I'm 16.
My childhood was good, I had lots of fun, but it was quite rocky at times.
Building up to when my mom was hospitalised,
her, she became very erratic.
We didn't really know what was going on.
She wasn't herself.
It was more like a gradual shift in time.
But probably when she first checked into the mental ward,
it really clicked, you know?
So my great gran had just died.
It was just very sudden.
We didn't know what was going on.
She was dealing with alcoholism at the time, too,
and everything just went downhill from there.
And she got into the mental ward and that's all I knew.
It was like a blur to me.
My impression of her was really wilted by this experience.
I was inspired to start the self-esteem team,
having experienced my own troubles growing up
and not having the right information that I could relate to.
I don't think I could have done anything.
I felt pretty powerless, and I wanted to be numb to everything particularly,
and it was like a very Kafkaesque situation. I just wanted to avoid it.
We don't just work with students.
We work with parents and teachers as well
for what we call a whole school approach.
I spoke to my pastoral manager about her,
I said, I said that my mom's in hospital and she said okay,
and it was never spoken about again. We felt quite alone.
I guess I didn't really see her as like a very strong person.
Like she she was more human, more flawed than me.
My dad, he was always quite frantic
and he didn't really treat the situation well, I don't think.
There can often be what's called role reversal.
So the child becomes the parent and the parent becomes the child.
And this gives huge responsibility to the young person.
So they essentially cut themselves off from friendship circles.
Music helped me through it quite a lot, to be honest.
I would just hide in my bedroom and stuff and like,
you know, my parents are constantly arguing outside,
I could hear the sounds of them arguing outside.
I didn't enjoy being at school.
I was constantly worrying and I started to have lots of days off.
I'd say I wanted to be in school more,
just like I kind of wanted to run away from my home life
and like I want to be involved in school affairs more.
Like I just want life to go on as normal.
But of course it didn't, it's just like topsy turvy, really quickly.
I think it would have been helpful for me to speak to somebody at school
because it would have made me want to go into school more.
They just need to pay a bit more attention to the students
because it's not always the students that are making a ruckus or being loud.
It's sometimes the students who don't say anything at all.
So many people suffer in silence or slip under the radar and aren't recorded.
I just wanted people to think that I was having a normal life,
so I just kept all these feelings bottled inside
of me and just suppressed them.
My mum has been home for like two years now and she has been dealing
with pretty well and she hasn't had any significant relapses or anything,
so it's good.
I don't feel I'll, I'll ever fully comprehend what happened.
But I think I think I'm more aware of, you know,
her situation and like the full scope of it.
I was really relieved when I got the call saying that my mum was home.
She contacted her doctors and said, would they be able to speak to us?
For me, it helps to speak to somebody because I was able to say things
that I didn't realise I was thinking.
Mental health conditions are a lot more universal and
there will be someone out there who can understand or someone out there
who is going through a similar thing and has perhaps come out the other side
or has good advice that might be able to help you.
I think it's a good thing I see my mum as more human,
although, you know, the crisis wouldn't be the best way
of teaching that to me, you know.
I think my mum's experience has taught me to take a step back
and think about myself more, not to be so selfless.
If I was giving someone advice who was going through this,
I would say, find someone you can really open up to because I didn't at the time.
Be patient and realise it's not your fault. It can't be helped.
It's not always the first person that you reach out to
that's necessarily the one you're going to connect to or knows how to help.
I only really found out I needed to open up to someone
like years later because I have a friend like that now
and it's been like a really good thing in my life.
So keep going.
Keep trying.
There's no one size that fits all.
It will take time for things to get better.
Even like the strongest people can like breakdown some time.
And if it takes a few people, that's fine.
That's normal.
You're doing better than you think.