What are mental health issues?
To some degree, mental health is similar to physical health – everyone may get it and it’s a matter of taking care of it.
If you’re in a good mental state, it means that you can react, feel and think how you want and need your life to be. But on the contrary, if you undergo a time of bad mental health you may learn the ways you are constantly feeling, thinking, or reacting tends to be tough to manage. The feeling of such a situation can be as awful as physical health, or even severe.
Mental health issues affect about two in eight individuals globally in any particular year. They span from ordinary problems like anxiety and depression to uncommon problems like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Are you the only one facing mental health problems?
Undergoing mental health issues is often confusing, upsetting, and shocking – more so at first. If you’re unwell, you can feel that the weakness in you, or even worse, you tend to ‘lose your mind’.
Such fears are normally backed by the negative (which is often untruthful) way that individuals undergoing mental health issues are exhibited in films, by the media, and on TV. As such, you may hinder or prevent speaking about your wellness or looking for help. And if you don’t seek quick intervention, you’ll end up in a sense of isolation and distress. But in reality, mental health issues are ordinary human experiences.
We’re certain that you know someone who is, or has undergone a mental health issue. They can occur to any kind of a person from every part of the world. And it is expected that, when you get self-care, support, and treatment that suits you, you’ll get better.
COVID-19 for instance has shown that mental health problems can affect anybody. Think of the loss of income, isolation, bereavement, and lockdowns that have befallen most people. Those who were facing mental health before the pandemic are in worse conditions.
What are the warning signs of mental illness?
When you feel something isn’t right, don’t rush to a conclusion of an illness, here are some common warning signs of mental illness.
- Appetite or sleep change: If you’re starting to sleep excessively or there is an appetite change, you could as well be having some mental health illness.
- Mood change: Having depressed feelings or dramatic or rapid change in emotion might be a warning of incoming mental health issues.
- Withdrawal: If you find yourself losing interest in activities you liked, you would need to seek help.
- Problem thinking: Losing concentration, logical thinking, and memory loss can as well be linked to mental health.
- Apathy: When you start losing the desire or initiative to be part of any activity, mental health might be knocking at your doorstep.
- Feeling disconnected: When you start feeling out of space, mental health might be creeping in.
- Unusual behavior: This is peculiar or uncharacteristic behavior.
- Nervousness: If you start to feel suspicious of others, mental health might as well be the problem.
What is a common mental illness?
There is a wide range of mental health illnesses. Of which some have the same symptoms, and therefore, you may undergo the symptoms of over one mental health issue. So, let’s find out the common mental health illness.
Depression
When you feel a low mood for a long and have your daily life affected, we refer to it as depression. Depression can make you feel despairing, hopeless, guilty, unmotivated, worthless, and even exhausted. Additionally, depression can have an impact on your sleep, sex drive, self-esteem, and your overall health.
Anxiety problems
When we’re afraid or worried, anxiety tends to take charge. If you become anxious about the things that are about to occur, then you are faced with mental health. Of course, anxiety is an ordinary human experience. However, if your anxiety feeling is very powerful, or rather lasts for long, then they can be hard to cope with. Besides, you may also experience visible symptoms like panic attacks and sleep problems.
Phobias
As the name suggests, a phobia is an overrated form of fear that is initiated by a certain situation like going outside or even objects like a squirrel. We say fear has become phobia if the fear itself has gone out of control to the danger. This may have a great impact on your mental health, and it can take time before you can return to normal.
COVID-19 Impacts on Mental Health
Stress, worry, and fear are common responses to real or perceived threats. Therefore, it is understandable and normal that people are facing fear amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Youth for instance have had to experience many COVID-19 related consequences like the loss of income and closure of universities which might have brought about poor mental health. Anxiety and depression have covered their faces.
Job losses also among many people have increased distress, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. And this alone has increased the rate of suicide and substance use.
Recovery from a mental health problem
You can recover from a mental health concern, and so is everyone – particularly after accepting the support services. Even if your symptoms may not completely disappear, the treatment that works for you should make you feel better and confident.
Better still, if you’re undergoing a more severe mental health issue, it is still feasible to get ways to treat your symptoms. For most people, recovery does not imply returning to your initial daily-live but acquiring some new ways of how to cope and being real.
But it’s vital to note that recovery is a process and it will never be direct always. Therefore, it will be very critical to put your effort to know every detail of yourself and develop ways of embracing the new self, instead of trying to eradicate every sign of your mental health illness. In that case, recovery to an individual is personal, and for most victims, the greatest thing is to seek alternative ways to live a life of choice. You should not let mental health problems take charge of you!
# Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels
