Jared Padalecki and his crusade for mental health

Some of you may know Jared Padalecki from playing Dean on Gilmore Girls.  After GG, he started playing Sam Winchester (whose brother's name is Dean and is a big joke) on Supernatural.  He has been really outspoken about mental health and his struggles with depression and anxiety.  During season three of the show, he was diagnosed with clinical depression.  He has found ways to cope with it, but still struggles sometimes.  In 2015 he cancelled on a convention in Italy because he had a "breakdown".  He talks about the incident in his chapter of "Family Don't End in Blood".  Something really minor happened that sent him in a tailspin due to his depression and he thought about suicide.  He made the decision to live, managed to get home safely and got the help he needed. He scrawled "Always Keep Fighting" on his arm in sharpie until he landed in the US.

He heads up the campaign "Always Keep Fighting" and uses the proceeds of t-shirts etc. to fund mental health charities such as IM ALIVE  (an organisation that is at conventions to help people with anxiety attacks etc.)  and To write Love on her Arms.   His co-stars Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins have a You are Not Alone Campaign that is under Misha's charity Random Acts of Kindness foundation.  The money raised from this campaign is used to train crisis counselors for a suicide prevention hotline.  This is a great video of Misha and Jensen talking about how the hotline has affected them and others.

Jared often explains how depression can affect anyone.  People think it means you are sad about something and that someone like him shouldn't be "sad".  He has a great career, is wealthy, has a wife and three beautiful kids, great friends etc.  He "shouldn't" be depressed, but that isn't how it works.

In my late 20s, I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism and SLE (Lupus) and on top of dealing with all of that I was depressed.  It took me awhile to go to the doctor about it because I thought it was a part of being sick.  Thankfully, my doctor was awesome.  He diagnosed me with clinical depression and put me on medication and gave me some strategies to cope.  When my Lupus went into remission and I was feeling better, I tried to go off the meds, but my doctor said that something is wrong with my brain chemistry and although there are things I can do to manage the depression, I will have to be on meds for the rest of my life.  I noticed I drank more when I was depressed so I stopped and I have been sober for over 10 years.  Due to my Lupus, I was on various opioids  for a lot of reasons - demerol, morphine, oxycodone, and Vicodin.  I was on Vicodin for over 2 years until one day I was teaching when my hearing went out- everything sounding like I was underwater and in a cave.  My doctor said that it can cause permanent hearing loss so he started weaning me off.  It was really hard, because at this point I was completely addicted.  He said we could try other pain drugs, but the addiction thing scared me so I decided to go meds free and just live with the pain.  Of course being in massive pain all the time doesn't help with depression!!!  It is all a vicious cycle!!! Living in massive pain all the time - physical or emotional- can, understandably, lead to thoughts of ending it all. People don't want to admit it because our culture is not kind to people who struggle.  "Just try harder, just pray harder, just think positively! "  Again it doesn't work like that!!!  Being a Christian doesn't mean that you can't have depression - or diabetes, cancer, or a broken arm!

Many people are inspired by Jared and his "Always Keep Fighting" Campaign - and depression is always a fight.  You can have a lot of easy days in a row, then a really hard one or ten!  I'm doing much better now and have a lot of coping strategies and can keep it at bay for the most part.  Stressful events - like moving to a new country!- can make it hard sometimes.