Image: Annika Johnson with a sculpture they created. Art is something which helps Johnson through her struggles. (Photo by Jeff Sandeen, courtesy of Annika Johnson)
Annika Johnson is enrolled in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School. In this interview, she discusses how she navigates life with anxiety and severe clinical depression.
I was diagnosed in 2016 with severe clinical depression and anxiety… that was my first semester of my freshman year. Since then, other things have come up. I haven’t been able to get official diagnoses, but there’s a strong suspicion that I have some form of complex PTSD, as well as other additional things that they’re trying to figure out, like auditory processing disorders as a result of depression, but it’s up in the air.
I mean it has pretty much affected my entire career at the U. Throughout undergrad, I had to work with the [Disability Resource Center] (DRC). There were always issues scheduling therapists. The U is a little notorious for not having great mental health resources, especially for the amount of people on campus. So I’m pretty lucky that I got to work with the DRC, and I have accommodations that I can request and stuff like that, but you know, especially with depression, there are some days that you just can’t get out of bed. And so, a lot of your class stuff can be impacted. It’s not like a funeral or other things that are excused by the University, you really have to advocate for yourself. So it’s a lot of not only just struggling with the mental illness itself, but having to advocate for yourself, and still struggling with school because of it. But I mean at the University of Minnesota, it’s really complicated.
I work part time during school, and depending on what I’m working on, it can really impact my presence at work. I work with children during the summer and so having mental health issues is not really ideal when you’re supposed to be happy and bright around kids. And also, just on a day to day basis, I think having depression and anxiety really is like a double edged sword. You’re either very anxious to do something, or you just don’t care at all, which can really conflict with each other. So some weeks, my depression is a lot stronger and I’m really struggling to get out of bed, and do daily activities, especially now that I live alone. I’m doing a lot more of the house chores even though my place is smaller. And everything tends to fall behind, and then anxiety comes in, and I feel anxious about what the depression has done or anxious about upcoming things, so it all kind of mashes together in the end.
I went to Boynton originally in the fall of 2016 for their mental health resource. I didn’t have a great experience. It was difficult to get an appointment in general. They have you fill out entry forms before you can see anybody and typically, at least in my experience, and this was six years ago, so it may have changed at this point, but I had to fill out five different sheets of paperwork and then come back a few days later when I was really having something that would have qualified me to go to an emergency room. I was just trying to avoid that, so I didn’t have a great experience at Boynton. I don’t tend to recommend it to people just because of that, but I also acknowledge that it’s been many years since then. Student Counseling Services is a little better for emergency situations. You can go in and see a crisis counselor at certain times during the day, but they have the same thing, where you have to fill out a whole bunch of forms and most of their effort is to get you a therapist or a consistent person outside of the University because Student Counseling Services does not have the capacity to be helping, what is it, like 40,000 students on campus? There’s just no way. The University doesn’t fund them enough, they don’t have enough resources to be a consistent therapist office for students on campus, and neither does Boynton. So while they’re good ahead of time, which is typically what I tell new students, those two fill up within the first couple months of fall semester. The wait time can be months to see someone consistently. I always recommend people get in contact with them before they even have issues, just so that they’re on file, they can have the forms ready and then use them only when needed, but go somewhere else to have consistent care. I’m a little disappointed with the University of Minnesota’s mental health options, if you couldn’t tell.
At the end of the day, if students want any sort of accommodation for school they typically have to go through the DRC, and the DRC does not have the capacity to take not only students with disabilities, but also students with mental health diagnoses and other things like that. It overloads the DRC, and students with disabilities have a harder time getting in. For the amount of money the University makes, you think it’d be better at this point, but it’s definitely not.
I really like doing art, I try to take an art class every semester even now that I’m in my master’s program. I think the credit load is worth it, and you can also take it pass/fail, something just to get your hands moving. I don’t live on campus anymore and there’s a dog park about four blocks away from me. I have a dog, he’s my emotional support animal. I got him in the spring semester of 2017 and he’s kind of been my rock ever since. So I found a lot of joy in bringing him out, it gets me out of the house. But also, I found a little bit of a community with other people that also have dogs around the neighborhood; so mostly dogs and art, they’re pretty fun.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview conducted by Eitan Grad.