I would say I had it in total for around 18 months, although there was a slight improvement from 6 months onwards. Its really easy to become hopeless and scared of the future but try to focus on the positive stories of people who have recovered. I was very lucky to have a boyfriend who suffers from bipolar and knew all about mental health issues. Otherwise I would have been certain I'd lost my mind. He would tell me 'I can't promise it'll never come back but I can promise it'll go away'. And it did eventually. The really crucial thing for me was to keep being around other people. No matter how awful it feels you have to make sure you keep socialising as much as poss. I isolated myself to start with and getting comfortable around people again was really hard x