Deyjah Harris, 18, has shared a candid video on YouTube, in which she opened up about her mental health struggles and admitted they haven't "gotten easier" over time.
She said: "Transparently speaking, depression and anxiety is something that I've been dealing with since about the age of 11.
"My self-esteem started to become an issue for me in the sixth grade due to bullying. I started to struggle with understanding what it was that I was feeling and I definitely knew that I wasn't able to express what it was that I was going through."
The teenager admitted that "without the proper knowledge and support," she turned to "self-inflicted coping mechanisms that weren't too healthy or beneficial to me or my growth" and even had suicidal thoughts.
She said: "There have been multiple times where I couldn't really envision the evolution of myself due to the fact that I just felt really unmotivated and I also repeatedly had thoughts of me not being here anymore."
And as time has passed, Deyjah has found her bouts of depression get worse each time.
She said: "The way that I viewed depression and anxiety at 11 is way more different than I experience it now at 18. In other words, it hasn't gotten easier for me. It seems as though any time my depression might come back ... it just kind of comes crashing down on me 10 times harder than it did the last time.
"Now, all of this is something I still have to deal with and manage, however, please don't let this give you the idea that you won't get better. It's really just about healing you and your inner child to prevent any open wounds from carrying into adulthood."
Deyjah didn't want to go into too much detail about her struggles as she wanted to protect herself.
She later admitted on Instagram it had taken her "forever" to produce and share the video.
She wrote: "The mental health video has finally been uploaded on YouTube. No matter where you are with your recovery, no matter how flawed you might be, there is nothing that needs to be added or taken away from who you are as a person."
