{"id":849253,"date":"2026-09-16T01:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T01:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849253\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T01:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T01:52:18","slug":"maine-woman-shares-her-personal-journey-with-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849253\/","title":{"rendered":"Maine woman shares her personal journey with mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I genuinely felt like I was dying.” Maine woman shares her struggle and coping with mental health<\/p>\n

\"AdamWESTBROOK, Maine \u2014<\/p>\n

Sweetser’s 34th annual Auction and Gala fundraiser<\/a> is this Thursday, Sept. 17, at Brick South at Thompson’s Point in Portland. WMTW Channel 8 is the official broadcast partner of the fundraiser. It is Sweetser’s biggest fundraiser of the year, and this year’s keynote speaker is Jaymison Harper of South Portland, who is a former client of Sweetser. <\/p>\n

\"Image\"Image<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Harper joined Maine’s Total Coverage’s Megan Torjussen to talk about her personal struggle with mental health and how, as she said, “Sweetser quite literally saved my life.”<\/p>\n

Torjussen and fellow WMTW anchor Jon Chrisos will co-host the event.<\/p>\n

Take us back to when things started to change for you. What was happening in your life at that time?<\/p>\n

I actually started high school feeling really confident. I thought I was going to fit right in and love every part of it. But about a month in, that changed. I fell in with the wrong crowd, I was skipping class, getting pulled into drama \u2014 and pretty quickly I realized this wasn’t going to be the experience I imagined.<\/p>\n

What started as rebellion turned into confusion, and then into sadness, because that just wasn’t me. I’m loud, I’m funny, I’m kind \u2014 but I couldn’t feel any of that anymore. It even became physical. I was dizzy, exhausted, falling asleep in class, no appetite. I’d call my mom crying, begging to come home because I genuinely felt like I was dying.<\/p>\n

Describe your state of mind when you were struggling the most.<\/p>\n

I was diagnosed with depression, put on medication, and honestly, nothing changed \u2014 if anything it got worse. I started lashing out at teachers, at my parents, at everyone. I felt lost and hopeless. That’s when I started harming myself, and it kept escalating until it became my way to feel anything at all.<\/p>\n

Eventually I reached a breaking point. I called it ‘going away,’ because I couldn’t even say it out loud. One day I sat in my room with a bottle of pills, and I told myself if my friend answered the phone, I’d try one more time to get help. She answered. I broke down, I begged for help, and she came. She helped me figure out how to tell my mom \u2014 and that was the moment everything started to turn around.<\/p>\n

What helped you get to a better place?<\/p>\n

Within minutes of telling my mom the truth, I was on the phone with a crisis line, and soon after she got me into Sweetser. A few days later I was admitted to their crisis unit. I remember walking in expecting the worst \u2014 but instead I saw a group of girls laughing around a table, playing a game. That was not what I expected at all.<\/p>\n

They invited me to sit with them, and from that moment everything started to change. Those nine days had confusion, sure, but also laughter, connection, and healing. For the first time in a long time, I could actually breathe. I didn’t know those girls or their stories, but somehow they became my family \u2014 and that’s what changed everything for me.<\/p>\n

Sweetser quite literally saved my life.<\/p>\n

Why was it important to you to share something so personal, publicly?<\/p>\n

Once I realized I wasn’t alone \u2014 that it wasn’t just me, it was ‘us’ \u2014 I chose to fight. I fight for the girls still there, for the ones who’ve already left, and for the ones who don’t have a safe place to go home to. Sweetser gave me the tools, the support, and the community I needed to keep going, and I still fight every day to stay healthy, stay strong, and stay here.<\/p>\n

Without Sweetser, I truly don’t know if I would be here. Sharing my story is my way of making sure other kids and families know that help exists and it works.<\/p>\n

What message do you want other young people \u2014 or their families \u2014 to take away from your story?<\/p>\n

Please, ask for help if you need it. Check in on the people around you. Pay attention to the signs. Because there are people who care, and there are places that will help \u2014 I’m proof of that.<\/p>\n

I’ll be sharing more of my own story that night [Thursday at the gala], and it’s going to be an important evening to give back to a cause that saved my life \u2014 and to help make sure more youth like me have somewhere to turn.<\/p>\n

People can get tickets at SweetserAuction.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sweetser chief communications officer Justin Chenette says hundreds of community leaders, business professionals and mental health supporters will come together for the event, which will feature chef-crafted food, live music, dancing and a photo booth.<\/p>\n

Chenette also says there will be more than 300 silent and live auction items up for bid this year. The live auction items include a trip to Bali; a travel package to Porto, Portugal, that includes a special wine tour; an African safari; a Hilton Head Island getaway; Maine staycation packages; a scooter; and tickets to New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins and Boston Celtics games. In addition, attendees will be able to bid on an autographed Taylor Swift album display.<\/p>\n

Sweetser will also be holding a penny raffle to make sure there is something for everyone.<\/p>\n

All of the money raised from the event will go toward Sweetser’s capital campaign for a new youth psychiatric residential treatment facility on its Saco campus, which will be a first-of-its-kind facility in Maine. Chenette says the goal is to raise $400,000 in one night in order to get the project across the finish line and open the facility next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I genuinely felt like I was dying.” Maine woman shares her struggle and coping with mental health WESTBROOK,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[359056,42731,359051,359052,275,267582,3727,3006,2683,359053,97,5123,20257,359054,359049,271,74924,27280,320765,14971,259,267416,260,3590,18223,316943,13546,359055,74927,359050,96450,36310,14972,2394],"class_list":["post-849253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-chenette","tag-coping-skills","tag-crisis-help","tag-crisis-line","tag-day","tag-emotional-story","tag-event","tag-family","tag-fundraiser","tag-getting-help","tag-health","tag-health-news","tag-help","tag-human-impact","tag-jaymison-harper","tag-life","tag-maine-health","tag-maine-news","tag-maine-woman","tag-maines-total-coverage","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-struggles","tag-mentalhealth","tag-people","tag-portland","tag-saving-lives","tag-story","tag-support-in-maine","tag-sweetser","tag-sweetser-gala","tag-teen-health","tag-ticket","tag-wmtw","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}