#virgoduh

Your school’s Disability Services/Accessibility Office/Office of Inclusion/whatever they call it

You’re looking for the office that helps Deaf/Blind/mobility-impaired students succeed in school. Mental health falls under the same category. It’s their job to make sure your school is providing you with as much chance at an education as it would provide to someone who’s totally neurotypical. Tell them what you told me.

Stuff they can do:

Tell you what your school’s requirement is for documenting a disability

Give you information on local assessment and treatment options--what psych professionals locally are good? Is there a fund somewhere that will cover your testing? Does the student health centre have a psychiatrist?

Provide you with a letter that tells your instructors that giving extensions, having flexible schedules, or dropping penalties for non-attendance is a legal requirement to accommodate you. This is not necessarily a free pass--a professor may decide that some things are mandatory or non-negotiable--but it is an easy way to bring these problems up early, before they become an issue.

Help find your or fund you a tutor (more on this later)

Help you find other resources and services on your campus

Your school’s Counselling Centre/Wellness Services/Social Work Office/wherever they hide the shrinks

This is the place where they offer free counselling. If there’s walk-in, go to walk-in; if they can book an appointment in a week, go in a week; if there’s a three-month waitlist, get your name on the waitlist.

Funny story--I had graduated undergrad before I realized that students got free counselling on-campus. I’d been in therapy since I was 16, but five years of undergrad? Yeah, no clue. I was looking for therapists on Psychology Today and shelling out hundreds of dollars out of pocket, and there were hot and cold running therapists under my very nose.

In fact, there might be more than just therapists. The school I worked at had regular counsellors, and also a Learning Specialist, whose job included teaching people with executive function disorders like depression and ADHD how to study effectively!  It’s worth asking about.

When you see one of these people, it’s very tempting to think they are An Adult Who Is The Boss Of You. They will look at you, understand you with their expert knowledge, tell you what your deal is, and give you instructions on what to do now!  

In reality, therapists are not Sherlock Holmes, or profilers on TV. We can’t just look at you and go, “I see by the way you button your coat that you’re a middle child and ambiguity makes you uncomfortable.”  We rely a lot on “client report”--on what you say is true. Psychological assessment is a process involving interaction, not a detached observation of stable qualities. If a therapist says something about you that seems inaccurate, it is beneficial and good to say, “No, actually, I think you’re mistaken. To me, it looks more like...”

You’re recruiting an experienced co-traveller to go on a trip with you. They know a lot about rocks and trails and climbing harness, but they don’t know the territory you’ll be travelling together. So first and foremost, you want to find someone you want to go on a trip with: a therapist who is a good fit for you.

If you don’t like your assigned therapist, ask for a new one. We have an ethical responsibility to provide referrals when we can’t provide someone with the treatment they need, and since a good client-therapist relationship predicts therapy outcome like 70% of the time, simply not liking or trusting your therapist is a good enough reason to try somebody new. If you want you can just email them after the session and say, “I don’t think you and I quite clicked. With what you know now of my personality and issues, is there someone else in your office you can refer me to?”

Medication. Different medication.

Not gonna lie, going on antidepressants was like... getting the inside of my brain whitewashed. There was so much space. So much room. I could think and feel without being constantly smothered in negativity! And going on ADHD meds on top of that was like.. the thoughts that had always been slippery, unable to grasp or manipulate, suddenly became solid in my hands. I could grip them, slow them down, tell them to go somewhere else.

Both times, it took five to ten adjustments to get to the right cocktail and dosage. For example, I was on an antidepressant that stopped me from crying and freaking out all the time but killed my creative drive, so we added a drug that gave me more energy so I could write again. Then money got tight, we tried me on a generic, found that didn’t work, and found a way to pay for the first version. Each time, it meant seeing the doctor, trying a dose for two weeks or a month, and then going back to report progress and try adjusting it again.

Again: It’s a process, an interaction. It’s something you get a say in. And if you’re currently on meds--well, let me just say: If you sent me an ask like that, your meds aren’t doing their job. They’re not the right ones for you. So it’s time for an adjustment.

If you can get to or afford a psychiatrist, great! A general practitioner who’s known you for a while will often do. And if you need to, well, I’ve gotten my meds adjusted by a different doctor every time at a walk-in family practice clinic. You do what you can. Information on who and what is available is often why Disability Services is a great resource--who knows, maybe there’s a psychiatrist on campus you can see for free who sees the depression/anxiety/ADHD trifecta all the time!

(General life tip: When they give you an assessment for depression, anxiety, or ADHD, don’t downplay your symptoms. Answer the way you would on a bad day or when you’re struggling. Of course you know how to cope with these challenges, but the unfair part is that you have to cope with them at all)

A tutor or academic coach

This never occurred to me for a long long time, because I was always a “smart kid”, and I always thought tutors were for people who didn’t intellectually grasp the material. Meanwhile: Surprise! I have a developmental disability that significantly impacts my learning! My grad school put me on academic probation and effectively foisted a person of this job description on me, and it was the BEST THING EVER.

If you’ve ever felt like you would work so much better if only you had someone sitting there all the time making you work? Or a sympathetic friend who could help you break it down and be less overwhelming? If the only time you get your work done is when someone else asks you about it? This is the person for you.

Most schools provide these services to students for free, or subsidize disabled students’ tutoring. If all else fails, you can find a tutor on your own and say, “I get this stuff intellectually, but I really need someone who makes me spend time with it, because left to myself I’d get anxious and ignore it all until the night before the deadline.”