Dealing with Depression | Interview with Esther Richards

She Was Ill With Her Mental Health From Age Ten — This Is What Depression Actually Looks Like

Esther Richards started struggling with her mental health when she was about ten years old. By the time she was a teenager, she was dealing with major anxiety, social anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. By her late teens, she was on antidepressants. Doctors told her she'd probably deal with this for the rest of her life.

This isn't a story about someone who was depressed and then got better. This is a story about someone who was depressed and learned how to live.

When It Starts Before You Even Know What It Is

Esther's mum always called her "a bit of a worrier." At ten or eleven, the worrying escalated. Problems with friends at school triggered physical symptoms — real, measurable, physical symptoms — but nothing was physically wrong. The doctor said it was probably anxiety.

"That just basically got progressively worse throughout my teenage years," Esther says. "And it developed into major general anxiety, but also a lot of social anxiety. I really suffered from panic attacks. And then eventually depression started, probably when I was about sixteen, seventeen."

There's a generational pattern in Esther's family. Mental illness runs through the line — not caused by any single event but wired into the biology. Understanding that distinction was important for Esther, because it stopped her looking for a trauma that didn't exist and helped her focus on managing what was actually happening.

The Teenage Years Nobody Talks About

Mental health in teenagers gets a lot of attention now. But when Esther was going through it, the support structures were thinner. School counselling helped somewhat. Doctor's appointments were frequent but often frustrating — referrals that went nowhere, waiting lists that felt endless.

Esther's strategy was simple and brutal: power through. Get up. Go to school. Sit the exams. Get through the day. Repeat.

"I kind of just powered through it, to be honest. Lots of doctor's appointments that didn't really go anywhere. Some school counselling that I had was helpful. But then eventually, once I turned eighteen, they gave me antidepressants and that helped."

The antidepressants helped. Not fixed. Helped. The distinction matters. For Esther, medication was part of the toolkit, not the whole solution. It took the edge off enough to function, but it didn't remove the underlying condition.

Choosing a Future She Couldn't See

When it came to university, Esther picked archaeology with Egyptology at Liverpool because it sounded interesting. Not because she had a career plan. Not because she saw herself in that field long-term. But because she couldn't see herself anywhere long-term.

"I didn't really have much of a sense of like, oh, I really want to do this because I didn't really see my future. I just saw that I was struggling. And so I thought, well, there can't be much of a future for me. So I'll just pick something that sounds interesting because it doesn't really matter what comes next."

That sentence — "it doesn't really matter what comes next" — captures the quiet devastation of depression in a way that clinical descriptions can't. It's not dramatic. It's not a cry for help. It's a shrug. And that shrug is one of the most dangerous things depression does.

Liverpool Changed the Scenery, Then Something Else Changed Too

Moving to Liverpool put Esther in a new city, a new environment, away from the patterns that had defined her teenage years. The change of scenery didn't cure her depression, but it created space for new possibilities.

She connected with people at Frontline Church. She found a community that didn't treat mental illness as a character flaw or a faith deficit. And gradually, incrementally, she discovered that the future she couldn't see actually existed — it was just hidden behind the fog of depression.

Faith entered her story not as a dramatic rescue but as a slow dawn. A growing sense that she was known and valued — not for what she could achieve or how well she was managing, but simply for who she was.

Depression and Faith Can Coexist

One of the most important things Esther communicates is that depression and faith are not mutually exclusive. You can trust God and still need medication. You can pray every day and still have panic attacks. You can be part of a church community and still feel desperately alone sometimes.

The church doesn't always get this right. Sometimes well-meaning people suggest that more prayer, more faith, more trust would solve the problem. Esther has heard those suggestions. She knows they come from a good place. She also knows they're wrong — or at least, incomplete.

Her faith is genuine and deep. Her depression is genuine and persistent. Both are part of her life, and she refuses to pretend that one cancels out the other.

What Living With It Actually Looks Like

Esther married Chris. She's involved in student ministry. She gave a talk on trusting God that drew on years of personal experience with exactly that challenge. She has an archaeology degree and a love of ancient civilisations. She has a life — a full, real, meaningful life.

She also has depression. And anxiety. And the knowledge that these will probably be her companions for a long time, possibly forever.

The courage in Esther's story isn't the courage of overcoming. It's the courage of continuing. Getting up each day and living fully, knowing that the fog might roll in at any moment. That takes a kind of strength that's easy to overlook and impossible to fake.

Hear the Full Story

Esther's full interview covers the specific details of her mental health history, how her faith developed alongside her illness, and what her marriage and ministry look like now. She also talks honestly about what the church can do better to support people with mental illness — and what it should stop doing. It's an essential listen.