Kate Farrell ('14) Shares Mental Health Journey

1/25/2017

Kate began experiencing anxiety at an early age. As a child, she remembers being afraid of things that didn’t scare her peers; in Grade 7, she found herself trying to combat intrusive negative thoughts with compulsive behaviours. It was in Grade 11 that she found herself struggling with disordered eating.

“I liked the feeling of being hungry, the attention I got when I wasn’t eating very much, the praise for stepping up my running,” Kate says.

Kate began seeing a therapist, who explained that she was suffering from anorexia. However, Kate resisted the diagnosis. “I believed that getting a label meant fitting into a very specific stereotype, and I didn’t fit that mould,” she says.

Kate continued to try to ignore her mental health issues. She graduated from Greenwood in June 2014 and headed off to Dalhousie that fall - but she wasn’t there long before she realized it was the wrong choice.

“If you ignore a mental health issue, it will get worse - it definitely did for me,” Kate says.

Kate entered inpatient treatment for four months, and her experience there started her on the road to recovery. “It was the best thing - and also the hardest thing - I ever did for myself,” Kate says. It was in treatment that Kate discovered that her anxiety was driving her eating disorder, and she learned coping mechanisms to deal with that anxiety. Once she left inpatient treatment, Kate still found it hard to break some of the habits that were causing her distress; recognizing that she needed more support, she began attending a day patient program.

Today, Kate is happily attending Queen’s University; she’s also a contributing writer for a Toronto lifestyle blog. Her recovery, she notes, is an ongoing process - it's not about waking up all day and being "all better."

“The best part about recovery has been the people I’ve met,” Kate says. “Other people who were going through the same thing, who nodded their heads when I explained how I was feeling. I didn’t feel so alone anymore.”

Kate was motivated to share her story with our students because she wants to help dispel the stigma surrounding mental illness. “There’s this pressure to feel 10/10, 24/7,” she says. “I hate that people feel they need to hide mental illness. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Asking for help or crying doesn’t make you weak.”

She also encouraged students not to avoid seeking help because they’re afraid of ‘falling behind’ their peers. “There’s no one way to go through life,” Kate says. “You need to do what makes you happy, not worry about checking off boxes.”

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“There’s this pressure to feel 10/10, 24/7,” Kate Farrell ('14) told students. “ I hate that people feel they need to hide mental illness. It’s nothing to be ashamed of."

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Date Posted

John Scott
1/25/2017 @ 3:57 PM

I think it is excellent that the school encourages open dialogue in the area of mental health. I'm betting Kate's opportunities to speak about her journey to better well-being further supports her confidence in her better health and the audience gets a peer conversation that with out doubt will have some positive impact. I am a Dad to three girls, two at Greenwood. One of my daughters told me that every person she knows her age is stressed. We've all got important work to do to bring awareness in this area and ways of doing life differently to our future parents and leaders. Great work, thank you.

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