The loneliness of depression is all-consuming; its relentlessness is exhausting. Your mind is unable to escape the consuming void of total despair. While you lie paralysed on the thin carpet of your bedroom floor, aware of the happenings of the world around you – people meeting other people, laughter, commercial flights crisscrossing the globe, stock markets fluctuating – you become acutely conscious of your isolation. Everyone else seems productive, multiplying their network of social capital; in the meantime, your tears crawl across the raised valleys of your cheeks. The world is moving on, together, and you are standing still, alone.

The catalyst for the most excruciating months of my life was my sister's cancer diagnosis. I was barely a month away from starting at Cambridge, and was living on a sugary cloud of euphoria. It was the realisation of something that I had worked very hard for, and Cambridge represented everything I wanted: friendship, success and happiness. My friends consoled me with superficial support – messages of sympathy, but no attempts to understand. No concrete measures to try and mend my fractured life. No evidence of sincere kindness. Either oblivious or uninterested, they seemed content with my thinly-veiled display of normality and happiness. I graduated from misery to fatalism and silently screamed for help. My unanswered call echoed on the empty walls of my confinement.

Friendship plays a significant role in my dissection of depression – for me, it is the simultaneous cause of and solution to my woes. Some seem to have forgotten what friendship is, what it entails, and the commitment that it demands. Cambridge is beset by insecurities and childish attempts at maximising ‘popularity’. Compassion dictates rising above this – ignoring the petty politics of social climbing, embracing human goodness and striving to better the lives of those around you, irrespective of who they are or what you stand to gain from being associated with them.

“Being truly compassionate means behaving in such a way that you express concern for the wellbeing of everybody, irrespective of whether you suspect them to be in particular need”

This ongoing episode of my life has had a seismic impact on my understanding of myself, my behaviour, and how I want to interact with the world around me. I strive to be kind to those I interact with; compassion and understanding is fundamental –these are the values that I seek to define myself by. Such an approach deems everything else ephemeral and insignificant. Compassionate people are those who extol these principles of kindness; other character traits are rendered trivial.

It isn’t necessary to assume that every person you walk past or interact with is suffering from a mental health related issue. Being truly compassionate means behaving in such a way that you express concern for the wellbeing of everybody, irrespective of whether you suspect them to be in particular need. Compassion is inclusive and egalitarian. It seeks no reward or benefit.

Living a life of compassion doesn’t have to be difficult. It requires being less selfish, caring less about how you’re perceived and more about a desire to go forth and make somebody else feel better about themselves. Even the most clichéd interactions can make another person’s day a little bit better; for those who suffer from anxiety, or another mental health condition, this will be even more significant.  

Need to stay in bed and watch Netflix? Completely okay.

Everyone is endowed with the basic capacity to be compassionate – it needs to be acknowledged to be engaged. We can endeavour to be inclusive, friendly and kind. As a society we can commit ourselves to helping those who are less fortunate than us. This includes those who are affected by a mental health condition, or who are financially less well off.

For the Cambridge community, there is not a more appropriate time to be talking about compassion than right now. The revelation of the Pembroke first year who attempted to burn a £20 note in front of a homeless man is shocking – it is completely reprehensible. The fact that the culprit was wearing white tie only exacerbates my anger; this is the perfect anecdote for the small group of Cambridge students who perceive themselves to be fundamentally better than those who are less fortunate and privileged.

Yet, once this visceral reaction has subsided, I feel compassion for the perpetrator of this ignorant and cruel act. His life is undoubtedly going through a period of severe turmoil – for right or for wrong, he’s Britain’s most vilified person. I’m not defending him, but I am compassionate. He must be feeling lonely and isolated, just like the homeless person he so cruelly taunted and just like many others across the globe whose lives are devoid of the warmth that compassion so readily provides.

For me, medication hasn’t worked, and neither has therapy nor spiritual healing. Compassion expressed by others, however, does help and I’m immensely grateful to those have behaved compassionately towards me. You should try it too – everyone will be better off for it