breaking lease agreement

[Farah Ali]

Hi! I'm new here and trying to find the right place to post, so hopefully this is the right place!

I recently let my apt manager know that I will need to break my lease in a few months (end of March, so I've given 3 months notice) because I am dropping out of my graduate program, thus losing my assistantship/means of paying rent. In response, she told me the only option I have is to find someone to take over my rent for me (though the lease would still be in my name), because their policy on lease cancellation is that it's allowed only if (a) you die (b) you're so ill you have to leave school (c) drafted into military service.

At the time I didn't go into the details of WHY I dropped out of my program/am leaving, because I'm not sure it constitutes a severe enough illness, plus it's just personal and I felt embarrassed discussing it with her. But the thing is, I have severe depression, to the point that it's interfering with my personal and professional life, and so I made the decision to just leave my program, for the sake of my mental health. My question is, do you think this will satisfy the manager and/or landlord (perhaps with a note from my therapist or something) as grounds for lease cancellation, or does "illness" refer to something physical, and/or life-and-death like cancer?