The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Mental illness experience difficult to verbalize by David Lea Oakville Beaver Staff 9 | Friday, May 3, 2013 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com It's difficult for someone with a mental illness to describe what they are going through to someone who has never experienced it. Most people can relate to an ordeal involving physical pain, however many cannot understand when a person is troubled. Oakville native Molly Heffernan worked to make an audience understand what it is like to live with severe depression during a presentation at a Youth Mental Health Expo, held by Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn's Oakville Provincial Youth Advisory Committee at Town Hall, Thursday. The event was intended to raise awareness of youth mental health issues and the services available to help those in need. "The pain of depression is not so easy to track or explain. It cannot be described as stabbing, shooting or burning and the pain cannot be localized in any one part of the body. It is an all encompassing pain in one's being," Heffernan told the audience. "In order for me to describe the extraction of this invisible pain in a way you guys might understand, I need to be able to remember the feelings in enough details that I can almost feel them again... that's really, really scary for me because I never want to feel those feelings again." The young woman said her experience with depression began during her first year at the University of Guelph. During the winter semester, Heffernan became deeply concerned about things like the state of the environment, her weight gain, grandparents' health and that she wasn't accomplishing all she should. "Overall, I just started to feel really, really down," she explained. "I began crying all the time and just felt miserable. There wasn't usually a specific reason I would cry. I just felt bad." Knowing something wasn't right, Heffernan made an appointment with student counselling services, but it was a two-week wait and she would ultimately skip the appointment. Feelings of uncontrollable sadness persisted during second-year university, with eral times her father drove down to see her. During their conversation, Heffernan' said her father asked her to finish the semester. This enraged Heffernan who ran inside her house and called her sister, sobbing hysterically. She later emerged from the house and collapsed on the pavement unable to move. "I couldn't get off the pavement. I felt paralyzed. I literally -- and physically -- could not move myself from the sitting position to a standing position," she said. "I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, but was also thinking way too much and too fast." Her father rushed her to a hospital emergency room where a doctor told her she was experiencing an anxiety attack and proscribed medication to help calm her. Upon leaving the hospital, the young woman went to bed where she remained see Young on p.11 The Regional Municipality of Halton NOTICE OF ROAD CLOSURE Watson Avenue Sheddon Avenue to Spruce Street Town of Oakville Various phased road closures will be in effect from Tuesday, May 14 to Tuesday, June 25 Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn addresses the audience at the recent Youth Mental Health Expo at Oakville Town Hall. photo by David Lea ­ Oakville Beaver (Follow on Twitter @halton_photog) Local access will be maintained. NOTICE OF CONSTRUCTION Wastewater Main Replacement on Watson Avenue and Galt Avenue Town of Oakville the young woman finding herself crying on the steps of her house one night so her housemates would not hear her. She then moved to a university in Ohio for her third year of studies with the hope the change of scenery and smaller class sizes would make things better. This was not the case. "I got really homesick and I started crying every day again. I missed my family, I missed my friends and I could feel the sadness coming back," she said. "I saw an on-campus counsellor and an off-campus counsellor, neither of them helpful or identifying me as potentially depressed." Heffernan said she really just wanted to go home and after telling her parents this sev- A STEP BEYOND IN CARE DO YOU HAVE: Salima Kassam Reg. Chiropodist · Foot/Arch Pain? · Ingrown Toenails? · Diabetes? · Swollen Ankles? · Corns, Calluses? Contract Number: Scheduled Start Date: Scheduled Completion Date: Project Manager: 728 Burloak Drive www.footandhealthclinic.com 030513 CALL FOR AN APPOINTMENT 905-632-1414 S-2864-13 May 2013 August 2013 Martin Larkin 905-825-6000 x 7614 Please contact us, as soon as possible, if you have any accessibility needs at Halton Region events or meetings.