March 29, 2024

Feelinfriendly

Exercise makes us healthy

Ashley Overbeek reflects on battles with mental health, addiction

HOLLAND — Every thing appeared thrilling for Ashley Overbeek.

She was a single of the best basketball and soccer gamers in the condition. Her long run couldn’t have seemed considerably brighter.

But that is what every person else noticed on the outside.

On the inside of, Overbeek had suffered sexual abuse, was battling multiple mental heath issues — bipolar, borderline individuality disorder, obsessive compulsive condition and extreme stress — and turning to medication and alcohol to escape just about every layer of her circumstance.

It was a huge load on a teenager and spiraled into uncontrollable addictions, leading to overdoses, suicide tries and a grip on her existence that she couldn’t get over.

“I ultimately got there. There are only three ways out of addiction, demise, institutions or getting cleanse,” Overbeek claimed. “I appeared at my decisions. I received rather shut to going to jail multiple occasions. I didn’t want to die — for a although, I did because I was in this kind of a dark spot I felt like the only way out was death.”

Overbeek spoke out all through Mental Overall health Consciousness Month, hoping her tale can help others out of identical scenarios — or, with any luck ,, aid other individuals prevent the dim highway she was on.

“I do not want the identical detail to take place to everyone else,” she claimed. “It just requires acquiring curious just one time and you blink, and you are undertaking it each individual working day.”

Ashley Overbeek reflects on all that she has overcome in her battles with mental health and addiction.

In its place of participating in elite university basketball, the all-condition performer at Hamilton, was getting superior and hating herself for it.

The additional her psychological overall health difficulties afflicted her, the more she turned to substances, a circle she just couldn’t crack.

1 in six youngsters bargains with some kind of mental well being concern. The typical delay involving onset of psychological ailment indicators and treatment is 11 many years, according to mentalhealthfirstaid.org. Two-thirds of teenagers with addictions have dealt with some sort of mental health and fitness concerns, in accordance to childmind.org.