Watch: ‘I am not a mental illness. I am Flora Tanti’

She had already been living with depression for several years when she finally reached out for help. The main barrier she met, and still does, is stigma, the young woman told Sarah Carabott a few days after the launch of the nationwide campaign #StopStigma.   When she learnt that her parents had called an ambulance, Flora Tanti packed her best outfit for burial. The last thing she remembers after her attempted suicide is being lifted into the back of the vehicle. That night, she survived. Four years later, the medicine bottles on the countertop again caught her eye. But thanks to the therapy she received after that attempt – her second – she managed to turn her back on the pills and checked herself into hospital. “It took me several years and a lot of crying to realise that I could be something beyond my condition. READ: 'You carry this label saying you are mental, not human' “The road to recovery started with support from someone close to me, and with professional therapy,” the 28-year-old recounts. Ms Tanti, now a mental health nursing student, knows that stigma pervades all sectors of society – from the next-door neighbour to experienced professionals – and it is one of the...