This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and, while we’ve come a long way when it comes to helping those in need, we can’t risk going backwards. Here’s how to identify the signs and seek help, says explains Mental Health Expert and psychotherapist Noel McDermott www.mentalhealthworks.net
Noel explains: To self-diagnose, or diagnose another person with having compromised mental health, you should first ask two key questions:
How serious are the ’symptoms’ you are feeling or observing?
This is the severity question. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 as low, where would you place each symptom or sign of distress?
To what extent are these distressing phenomena interfering with the normal course of your life or the person you observe?
This is the impact question, and again it can be given a numerical value from 1-10.
Using these two questions will guide you in thinking about what to do. For example, if you have only one of the indicators in this article, but it’s very severe and interferes with life a lot, you may need to get professional help as a matter of urgency. If there are 10 symptoms but not severe and they don’t interfere with life too much, it may only be necessary to make minor lifestyle adjustments. An important point to be aware of is that psychological distress primarily appears as physiological issues. There is no split at all between mind and body; they are one and the same thing. So, what are the signs to look out for that there may be psychological issues?
Sleep
Sleep disturbances are a classic sign of a potential problem. This could be at either end of the spectrum. Not getting enough sleep or sleeping too much. Noticing significant changes to your usual sleep pattern is the key here.
Appetite
You may also notice you or the person you are concerned about has a change in their eating patterns. Again, it could be at either end of the spectrum, from avoiding food to eating a lot more.
Isolation
Avoidance or isolating are indicators of problems. Avoidance can be an anxiety issue, and isolation a depression issue. Withdrawal from contact for whatever reason is serious for any social animal such as ourselves.
Self Medicating
Typically this is alcohol and substance misuse, however, it could also be sex, porn, food or even shopping. This is where you should look for significant changes in usage.
Changes to Thinking
Stating one is a burden, or a failure (negative self-talk), or accusing others of being bad or thinking badly about yourself. Do you – or they – see the worst and most dramatic outcome from a problem?
How to Get Help
Generally, we are looking for ‘constellation’ or ‘clustering’ assessments, in which several features emerge and are present for a couple of weeks before saying there is a problem – unless of course the severity and impact measures are very high. Obviously ignoring distress in one’s self or others because there is ‘only’ one problem that happens to be destroying the emotional quality of life is not a good idea.
Another indicator of possible issues is what might be called early signs of potential relapse. If there is a history of mental health issues, even one or two less severe signs of the old issues should be looked at with a view to making lifestyle accommodations.
The final more general set of signs of possible issues fall entirely into the somatic presentation. Psychological and biological cannot be divided and psychological distress often presents as a physical illness. It’s the science-based understanding of the role of stress hormones to health. Dis-‘stress’ hormones are present in every form of psychological distress or mental health struggles, and stress hormones are implicated in all lifestyle illnesses. Typically, how we diagnose somatic as psychological is when there are a series of unexplained physical issues; gut problems, back or muscle problems, susceptibility to colds and flu, fatigue and brain fog for examples. These presentations need to be investigated medically, but also looked at if there is a psychological distress component. This avoids the trap we fall into with chronic fatigue, and of dismissing the presence of a physical reason. Managing stress is a key skill in managing most illnesses.
