Imagine the perfect room. People are enjoying themselves talking with others and as they are comfortably enjoying themselves, the room slowly grows smaller, but only for you. This is how Junior Brenna Keeling said she felt when depression sank in.

“There’s nowhere to stand and no room to move and nowhere to put my things and there’s nowhere to be me,” said Keeling, recalling what depression made her feel like.  “It just gets smaller and smaller until you feel like you can’t breath and you’re stuck.”

Depression is an illness that, in most cases, requires a medical profession to cure. Most people will go through the ‘blues’ or states of feeling sad that will pass with time, however depression is a persistent feeling of hopelessness and will interfere with daily activities, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

“When you’re starting and you’re in depression normal inflections of the voice or like facial features you don’t actually feel it so it’s really hard to put that in so you just look awkward and untimely,” said Keeling, explaining the fall into depression. “You just feel alone more and more until you get to that spot that you don’t want to talk to anybody.”

For students that are going through depression or know someone who could be going through depression, Staley offers a student run support group called Remedy Vine that meets every Thursday in room CR126 during the second half of Falcon Hour.

“If anyone ever needs a place to go or someone to talk to, there’s a whole group of people in there ready to accept newcomers,” said Keeling, President of Remedy Vine. “It really does help, and it really does save lives.”