Mental health involves your social, psychological and emotional well-being. It is used to handle how we interact with others, make decisions, and cope up with stress. If you have mental health problems, your way of thinking, behavior, and mood are affected. Not only will you suffer but also the people around you suffer. People may shy away when you suddenly deal with them in a negative way or social interaction may seem too exhausting.Some of the reasons why people experience mental health issues are due to trauma or past experiences, genetic or biological. If you are experiencing mental exhaustion, talk about it and get help. Seek your family or friends’ comfort or speak to experts, or try becoming a life coach to people experiencing the same problems as yours.
Helping others is proven to heal yourself, too. Having a healthy mind is crucial to living a happy life. Here are other reasons why you need to take care of your mental health:
1. Your relationships matter
Mental illness affects you, as well as the people around you, especially your family and close friends. If you suffer from mental health issues, the probability of destroying your relationships with people is high. Your family will likely be financially and emotionally stressed when sacrificing to help you get well. This is especially relevant if you’re a veteran struggling with PTSD symptoms. You can click here to see what VA disability rating your PTSD correlates with, and what benefits you could be entitled to as a result of PTSD from serving in the military, to help pay for treatments, medications, and other helpful resources.
Your family and friends may become emotionally stressed when they see you suffer and not getting well while financially broke in buying all the medications you need to recover. Your family’s activities and routines may also be altered in consideration of your situation. Some even lose jobs and relationships when they are too engaged in helping a family member suffering from severe mental illness.
They become emotionally stressed when they see you suffer and not getting well while financially broke in buying all the medications you need to recover. Your family’s activities and routines may also be altered in consideration of your situation. Some even lose jobs and relationships when they are too engaged in helping a family member suffering from severe mental illness.
The worst that can happen is for your family member to develop psychological or social problems like depression, sleeping problems, and withdrawal from the community. If you are romantically involved and suffering from mental health problems, you may even end up breaking up due to emotional strains to you or your partner. Some may also become too obsessed with their partner causing physical violence.
2. Your career needs to grow
If you suffer from mental health illness, your productivity level is at stake. Sometimes, you are distracted by environmental stimuli like noise, smells, or even sights. If these occur, you may feel restless and unable to focus on your work. At times, you may also feel you lack the energy to do your job due to medications that make you drowsy.Having mental issues also gives you difficulty when pressured with multiple tasks. It can stress you out and can make you withdraw from your colleagues. Other challenges you may feel at work is taking criticisms negatively and responding to change.As a result, your productivity decreases. If you can handle your mental health issues, you are likely to take absences and sick leaves from work. If your mental health issues aggravate, you may end up losing your job, home, and financial stability.A research done by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health found out that people who are depressed and suffers anxiety are likely to take an extended leave of absences. The World Health Organization even noted that mental health problems are one of the ten leading causes of disability thereby estimating 200 million lost work days.
3. Your physical fitness can improve
Physical and mental health comes hand in hand. If you are in pain, it inhibits you to do a lot of things you usually do thereby leading you to stress and anxiety.
Here are some ways to keep you physically fit:
- Regular Exercise – it releases endorphins and serotonin responsible for making you feel good that can help you fight off depression and anxiety.
- Healthy Diet – avoid eating processed, low-nutrient, and high-calorie foods. Instead, have a menu of fish, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and whole grains.
- Sleep Schedule – get enough sleep for seven or more hours per night.
- Gateway Drugs – avoid nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol.
In reverse, mental health problems can cause physical health issues. For example, if you are under stress, anxiety or depression, you become sleep deprived lowering your immune system or even weakening your ability to handle a heavy workload. If you experience mental health disorders, it makes your body unable to fight off chronic diseases such as heart ailments, high blood pressure, obesity, asthma, chronic fatigue, insomnia, and high level of sensitivity to pains. Depression makes you sluggish that affects yours wants to do extra physical works such as going to parks or where you usually hang out.
If it goes on for a long time, not only will you lose social connections but also your strength to do simple tasks.
4. Your likelihood of being violent or victimized is reduced
Mental illness is found to cause violence or for worse, crime. If you are mentally distressed, you often develop severe mental illness if not treated such as paranoia. It can lead you to harm others because of overthinking that people are out there to get you. Violence is likely to occur when mental health issues are accompanied by the use of alcohol or misuse of drugs.
Substances heighten hallucinations and delusions thereby exhibiting violent behaviors towards people who are close to you. On the other hand, you most probably experienced being victimized when you suffer mental disorders. A study shows that people with psychiatric illness are 2.7 times likely to be a victim of crime.Research also shows that people who have mental illness harm themselves than hurting others. For instance, a schizophrenic or people suffering severe depression are likely to attempt suicide.
To help prevent or fight your mental health issues, check out the following and choose what fits you:
- Self Help –It involves focusing on applying strategies that improve recovery, triggers or warning signs and wellness through self-help books to change their mindset in life.
- Support Group – Whether online or personal, this serves as group treatment in which people who previously experienced mental health issues helps them how to get out of such illness.
- Psychotherapy – It is a treatment provided by professionals who explore on thoughts, behaviors, feelings, and well-being of an individual. It can come in forms of an individual, group, or family therapy.
- Medication – Although it will not directly heal the illness, it helps manage symptoms such as antipsychotics or antidepressants medicines.
- Psychiatric Hospitalization – It is a required treatment for severe cases of mental disorders for close monitoring, administration of fluids and nutrition, medication, and other emergency care.
Conclusion
To have a long happy life, you must take good care of your mental health. One aspect of life can severely affect the other elements when untreated. There are a lot of ways to prevent or heal from mental illnesses. You can either ask for your friends or family’s help, and understanding or you can join virtual groups who are tackling mental health issues.
If you want to keep your situation to yourself, ask a virtual coach or psychiatrist to treat you. What matters is you get the proper treatment. Because fighting it alone will have an extreme impact on your daily life. Get help so you can go back to your normal happy life.
