So, if you’re the kind of person who hears ‘patriarchy’ or ‘oppression’ or even ‘basic level of empathy for other human beings’ and spontaneously bangs at my window with flaming torches, the lion-hearted ardour of Richard Dawkins and/or passive aggressive Facebook comments to kindly let me know I am the enemy of free speech and the West, there is a high chance that you’re not going to like reading this. However, I consider myself a fairly reasonable member of society at most times, so let me do my best to explain my points of view to you and we’ll see how we go. At worst, all we’ll need to do is politely avoid one another in Sainsbury’s.

Unlike most of you, I have not returned to Cambridge yet, and that is because I need time for my new anti-depressants to kick in. Friends (I promise I have one or two) whom I have not mentioned this to yet, please don’t freak out that I’m going to come back and suddenly be crying on you all the time. I am actually the same person I’ve always been. Some days are bad, but most of the time I manage fine. When I walked out of my appointment, originally made for what I thought was a particularly bad instance of PMS, prescription sheet in hand, I realised that I’ve been dealing with this, by myself, for a very long time.

While mental illness, like physical illness, is caused by a variety of complex, interacting factors, my contention is that depression is, at least sometimes, a feminist issue. At this point I imagine someone reading this, armed with a large coffee to fuel them through a tough day of telling people on the internet they are wrong, will enter the fray: ‘OF COURSE. FEMINISTS ARE SO MISERABLE ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME, MAKING UP ALL THESE SILLY PROBLEMS THAT DON’T EXIST. MEGALOLS, MAKE ME A SANDWICH.’

While this may seem a breathtakingly original criticism, this would be by no means the first time feminism has been labelled as a cause of depression. The advent of ‘Second Wave’ feminism in the 1960s and 1970s was blamed for increases in female suicide. If you happen to be about 115 years old you may also recall that in early twentieth-century Britain, medical professionals advised that women should not be educated, as this would clearly make their reproductive organs shrivel up.

But for me the relationship is the other way around. For me, a patriarchal society, presumably combined with a genetic predisposition, has been a major factor in my bouts of depression. For me, feminism is part of what guides me towards a solution.

Obviously people of all genders experience depression, and there is no way I ever want to erase anybody’s experience. To ANYONE who is struggling, your experiences are real and valid and there is no one who should tell you otherwise. My point is that our mental health is not entirely separate from the environments in which we grow up and live our lives, as many studies on depression, ethnicity and gender have shown.

Many psychoanalysts have long believed that depression is anger turned inwards. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to think that a society which inhibits people’s control and agency over their own lives or finds their anger problematic might contribute to depression.

There is so much that has made me angry. For as long as I can remember. I was angry when I was 11, at the man who leered at me and my friends when we stood on the train station platform on the way to school. I was angry when I was 16, when a man pushed my best friend into a corner and threatened her because she wouldn’t respond to his catcalling as she walked home from work in broad daylight. I was angry when I was 19, when my parents were getting divorced, and I realised for the first time how unfair the marriage had been on my mother.

Yet ‘angry women’ are not really allowed to exist. We are told that good girls don’t get angry. They smile and they understand where everyone is coming from and they’re good at helping other people feel better. Anger in women is often ridiculed. She’s probably on her period, she probably needs to ‘calm down dear’. When you’re not listened to, it’s so easy to feel so powerless. This is even more disproportionately the experience of women of colour, as Hannah Giorgis’s piece on the ‘angry black woman’ stereotype illustrates.

Maybe feminists or other social justice campaigners are more likely to become depressed. But maybe this has a lot to do with the constant demands that they be nice above all else, that they make full allowances for other people’s sensitivity but must not express their hurt, anger or frustration for fear of being dismissed as ‘unreasonable’ or ‘aggressive’.

In my life, feminism is a big part of my cure. Feminism, and all the women who have instilled it in me, have taught me that I am allowed to have control, that my feelings are valid, and that I am under no obligation to be sickeningly, sweetly nice to everyone I meet. When I’m at my worst, but also when I’m at my best.