Perceptions around depression need to change, says Dawn Boyd, as we should all try to judge others less.

For too long in life, when we have heard the term 'depression', the assumption has been that it's all in the head. Yes, it's mental health but it's not as simple as that.

Growing up, I suffered with this disorder and it's draining. At the age of 16 and someone talks to you about why you are so low all the time, you tell them you're depressed you get the response of 'you're too young to be depressed' or the 'what have you got to be depressed about?' This just proves the common misconceptions behind it.

She added the concept of walking in someone else's shoes has never been more apt than when judging a person with a mental health disorder.

Another pet-peeve is the constant judgement of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The whole idea that it's just children misbehaving is so abhorrent when you see a child who is having a moment of calm, they get distressed because they don't want to have those 'meltdowns', they feel embarrassed. What is misunderstood is that they are compulsions and control isn't always a strong point.

A friend of mine recently posted a video of her son sitting at a meal, calm as anything but he could not sit still. It was something he did, he didn't even realise he was doing it but he would sit and had to be moving something or making some sort of noise.

Would you be so judgemental on someone with a condition such as Tourette's? The condition where people have their 'tics' and can't always control what they say or do?

Why are we so selective about conditions that are right or wrong and how we perceive people for them? Depression can be just as physical. The physiology of depression stems from a lack of serotonin in the brain, so it needs medicating. Yet, because it isn't physically seen or because someone plasters a smile to their face to hide an ache so strong that a person is literally battling a will to live, for you to then approach about how they should be feeling is not conducive to a good a fight and if anything in turn, only makes the person feel worse about themselves.

Depression can affect in so many different ways and each person is different so where one person can fight daily, one person may have a moment of weakness and lose their fight.

When a person takes their own life, whilst some tend to be sympathetic to the plight, there is still a handful of people in the world who are quick to call them selfish for their act.

I want you to close your eyes. Think of all the negativity you have had thrown at you, maybe for something you couldn't help. Have you ever struggled with an addiction? Have you ever had that time in your life where you felt pointless? You are in a hole so dark and so big you don't know how to get out and after a time of trying to hard just to fall back down? If you haven't, then you are so lucky.

If you have and you still choose to judge, what lessons did you learn from what you went through? Were you alone or did you have someone throw you down that ladder you needed? Did you ask for help? Some people don't want to burden. The late Chester Bennington lost his fight. He had money, success and fame but when it came to it he felt so lost and in so much pain he thought the only way to stop it is to die.

The thing with suicide is you don't necessarily want to die. I know it sounds absurd but it's not always about the death, you just want that pain gone. You are so convinced you believe no one needs you so why would it matter if you died as a result. The death is the after effect of getting rid of that pain.

I say this as a person who did try to take her own life when I was 18. I was in a psychologically and sexually abusive relationship. He slowly beat me down mentally to the point I believed no one else but him wanted me. So, when he left me and I desperately tried to cling on to the only person who wanted me alive, he walked away with his new partner and I overdosed.

The lack of support for youth mental health has been so shocking for so long that back then when the paramedics came they just wrote on the form that I was 'feeling sad'. At this point, I don't think even my parents knew or still know the severity of how I feel on a day to day basis due to depression. A few years later, my parents went on to tell me they believed my suicide attempt was a cry for attention because I hadn't taken the right pills. So, you learn who you can and can't talk to but it can always come as surprise when people fail you.

My fight is on-going. I have been through a lot of things in life that I won't go into detail about because that is my fight and I don't need to justify my own depression to validate to someone else how I should feel.

Plenty of people have been through the serious horrors of the world and have made a life from their fight, they have learnt from it and continue to use this as their podium to encourage.

I have so much respect for these people, they are heroic and mascots, champions to the many who are fighting, or even to those who lost their battle. They continue to prove to us that there is that light in the hole that we so desperately need.

Those who lost their fight are not weak, they are not selfish only so low and numb that they were felt feeling they had no other option. Don't judge them, mourn their loss. Support their families who undoubtedly have that guilt in feeling helpless, that they didn't see it or that they let them down.

No one is to blame in the fight on mental health. We do need more awareness on this and it will be a continuous act as long as people live a life believing only certain people are 'allowed' to be depressed. That children with 'ADHD' are just undisciplined. That people with anxiety and don't want to leave their home are just 'anti-social'.

Try living with a mind that is so busy and active with negativity that you can't eat, can't sleep but yet still so exhausted you physically can't move, or don't want to face the world.

Everyone has their battles they are fighting every day. Whether you are trying to hit that deadline at work, you want to complete that degree you so desperately yearn for. Their battles are theirs and yours are yours, don't judge a person's survival tactics because they don't conform.

Everyone on this Earth is a fighter for their own beliefs and their own battles. No two people are the same and that is definitely something we need to remember.

• For more from the EDP's mental health takeover special edition, click here.