The woman behind IFL Science candidly writes about living with mental illness

Unless you avoid Facebook completely, you’ve probably heard of I F**king Love Science, which three years and 22 million likes later, has proven to be one of the most popular pages on the social media site. Both celebrated and vilified, the site is and has always been run by one Elise Andrew, a 26-year-old science enthusiast.

Andrew hasn’t given interviews in more than two years, but over the weekend she decided to give the world a brief glimpse into her personal life. In particular, her struggles with mental health issues. See, Saturday was World Mental Health Day and Andrew took the time to explain that despite the fact that she was offered a $30 million offer on her site and suffers from mental health issues—many of which are exacerbated by the vitriol she regularly faces on social media—she continues to run her site.

Andrew started off by touching on the occasion for her sharing:

And then detailed her own issues:  

According to Andrew, she’d never shared this information publicly until now, but she hopes it will help others who feel ashamed or embarrassed by their mental health conditions.    

In fact, running IFL Science has been helpful for her mental health—even if it has created no small amount of controversy for her:  

And then she hit on the Golden Rule of the Internet:

Elise Andrew will be the first to tell you that dealing with mental health isn’t easy, but we think she’d also agree there’s lot of amazing science out there that’s made it easier than ever to deal with these types of problems. Like she says, it does get better.

(Image via Twitter)