Do you believe mental illness is as serious as physical illness?

Mental illness is something I've struggled with my whole life, and people, including most of my high school teachers continually told me it wasn't real.

I remember being sent to my year coordinators office in year 11 because I had stress-induced anxiety (and many other things). It took my mum over an hour to explain what exactly it was, I was extremely sleep deprived because of it (10 hours of sleep a week), I was constantly panicking and self harming. His response was "well, everybody gets a bit nervous before tests".

I finished year 12 last October, and since then I've done nothing but work. I'm only two weeks away from adulthood, and my life has literally become work and sleep, since I am so worried about the future, and so stressed about money. I cannot go on to tertiary education for at least a year because I can't afford it (that's why I work all the time), and I'm not eligible for government assistance as I still live at home and there's no help for the mentally ill.

I have GAD, OCD, social anxiety, stress-induced anxiety, depression and I get paranoid very easily. I also cannot afford help any longer, and since I'm always so stressed about my future, my health has deteriorated rapidly over the past month. I'm constantly tired, no matter how much sleep I get, I feel sick all the time and I have no energy.