Old or young, neglecting your mental health is bad for your physical health and vice versa. If you have a chronic physical illness such as diabetes or heart disease and you suffer from depression or an anxiety disorder, you are at considerably higher risk for disability and premature death. Depression and anxiety disorders often express themselves through physical symptoms: stomach problems, headaches, backaches, sleeplessness, fatigue, weight loss, or obesity. People in the early or mid stages of a dementia, such as Alzheimer's Disease, are likely to also be depressed and/or anxious, and these co-occurring mental conditions reduce already compromised cognitive functions. If you suffer from a long term, severe mental illness, your life expectancy is at least 10 and perhaps 30 years less than the general population's, largely due to poor health.
Mind and body are inextricably linked. A decade ago the Surgeon General of the United States tried to capture this relationship by saying, "There is no health without mental health." He might have added, "There is no mental health without health." Millennia ago the Romans said much the same thing, "Sound mind, sound body."
Each year about 25 percent of us have a diagnosable mental or substance use disorder or both. Yet only 40 percent of those of us who have such a disorder get treatment. Why? Many people get help from family, friends or clergy. But many of us don't know when we have a mental disorder or are too embarrassed to talk about it openly. In addition, many primary care physicians don't ask questions to identify mental and/or substance use problems; and if they do, they may make referrals, which many people do not follow up on. Besides, in most places there is a shortage of qualified mental health professionals.
It is entirely understandable that many of us don't realize when we have a mental disorder because sometimes the symptoms of a disorder are very much like the ordinary ups and downs of human life. Sometimes we get sad, sometimes we are frightened, sometimes we ruminate at night and can't sleep, sometimes we are lethargic, and sometimes we are really charged up. That's just being human. But sometimes we are not just sad; we are despondent and nothing gives us pleasure. Sometimes we are not just anxious; we are immobilized by our fear. Sometimes we are not just having a little too much to drink from time to time; being drunk or hung over is getting in the way of our work or our relationships.
It is also entirely understandable that many of us are too embarrassed to talk openly about having a mental disorder. It is very hard to say out loud or even to oneself, "I am mentally ill," in a society in which being mentally ill is a curse.
And it is understandable that most primary care physicians are not very good at identifying mental and substance use disorders. They haven't been adequately trained; and, if they do identify a mental illness, they often don't know how to treat it effectively or have time for the part of treatment that depends on talk and human interaction.
What can you do to take care of your mental health?
1. Preserve it by staying active and involved with other people, particularly those you enjoy.
2. Try -- hard as it is -- to maintain enough balance in your life so you are not stressed out all the time.
3. Ask your doctor to screen for mental health problems. There are screening tests that you can fill out in the waiting room that are remarkably accurate. Of course, your doctor may not know what to do if you screen positive; but she/he is more likely to learn once there are test results just as they have learned to manage lipids because there are now tests for cholesterol and triglycerides.
4. Go to a mental health or substance abuse professional in a local clinic or in private practice.
Medical and mental health professionals cannot successfully treat all our suffering. Human life is filled with reasons to be unhappy, frightened and confused. But some of our suffering can be avoided, cured, or ameliorated if we make adjustments in how we live, recognize that our minds are integral to our health, acknowledge that we may have a mental or substance use disorder, and seek help when we need it. Treatment can be, and often is, effective.
Something on your mind but don't know where to turn? Call 1-800-273-TALK. This will connect you to mental health call centers around the U.S.
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nowadays when they tell you how and what to think, they do it the name of your own health!
"diagnosable disorder" that's quite the qualifier,
just because it's in the DSM doesn't mean it ought to be
if only you did this and thought and behaved like that you could live another 30 years!
mankind's obsession with immortality continues
For instance, as Anne Dunev points out, many patients (especially women) have depression, anxiety and even become psychotic as a result of thyroid disease and other autoimmune disorders, such as celiac disease, lupus and MS. There is a long-standing connection between, for instance, schizophrenia and Crohn's disease. Nobody that has researched these problems suggests that poor mental health habits will bring about these illnesses. Instead, we know that the same disorder that can cause fistulas in the bowel, also has a negative affect on the brain.
When an anxious patient complains to her doctor about severe fatigue, muscle aches, poor digestion and insomnia, too often she is given a cursory TSH test (super-sensitive for testing thyroid stimulating hormone, very poor at finding early-mid stage thyroid disease) and sent home with an SSRI prescription. Instead of taking her frame of mind in and understanding it as a symptom, she is suspected of hypochondria and serious causes aren't searched for.
Even with all the attention given the gluten free diet and celiac disease, it is estimated that only 8% of patients with active disease are yet diagnosed. I'm guessing that the rest are still going from doctor to doctor if they haven't given up.
I, too, am strictly opposed to doctors handing out prescriptions for SSRIs, stimulants and benzos willy-nilly without really getting to the cause of a problem (or, worse yet, writing off what a patient says and not placing everything into the context of the Big Picture); but I also do not think it's fair to say that all mental disorders are byproducts of physical ailments. I believe it's just as likely for a mental health disturbance to cause physical disease and dangerous to downplay that possibility for the sake of settling for an easy answer.
I agree that seeking a mental health professional for treatment when necessary or for an assessment periodically to make sure all is well is an excellent plan. It's difficult for someone to imagine freedom and relief when they are suffering, and that makes calling for help difficult. Articles like yours that help people see that they have a chance to improve their situation by tending to their mental health is invaluable.
Joanna Poppink, MFT
Los Angeles psychotherapist
author: Healing Your Hungry Heart: eating disorder recovery for women, Conari Press 08/11
John Robertson, Brooklyn NY
Don't hit your head. Don't let your kids hit their heads. Should you let them play football? Ride a skateboard? Ride a bike? Think hard about these.
A helmet protects the skull, not the brain. The living brain is soft and mushy: sort of like pudding. When the head hits a hard surface, like a football field, or the pavement, the brain sloshes around inside the skull. This breaks axons which are the connective elements between neurons. One neuron by itself can do nothing. Only a network of connective neurons allows us to function.
When an axon is broken you have brain injury.
We do not know how many psychiatric illnesses have been cause by TBI, but some are.
TBI can cause psychosis, depression, etc. etc. Try to prevent all head injuries.
(from a retired family physician)
steely dan
mental health [ which should not imply mental illness ] is brain health and that obviously makes things really simple
brain health is even more complex than mental health
and then relating mental health to brain health and vice versa , the matter of real and economical remedies free of side effects becomes unfathomable
lack of brain health [ assuming the brain developed fully in the first place in optimum conditions ] is a function of damage to its integrity. there is no mental illness in a healthy undamaged stressfree brain . what a healthy undamaged unpolluted full potential stressfree brain is ,God only knows
tm.org is the only complete remedy
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