(Akiit.com) Mental health issues are a difficult thing to live with, especially in a society that expects so much from every individual. People with mental health issues are often branded as “crazy” or “insane” – but the truth is that labels like that only scratch the surface. Most people with mental health problems are much more than their condition: they have wants and preferences, like everybody else, and they feel the same emotions.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, more than 1 in 5 Americans are currently living with a mental health condition. It’s worth taking some time, therefore, to reflect on some of the things that only people with a mental health condition know.
Even If You’ve Got A Diagnosis, It Doesn’t Mean It’s Correct
Beth, a director at UniServ, had been seeing a therapist to discuss how she felt in the run-up to her periods. In the two weeks before her cycle, she’d been feeling depressed and sullen, and this had continued for year after year, without a proper diagnosis. She then switched to a different therapist who diagnosed with her a condition called premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a condition which can affect women at certain times of the month. It was only with the help or more knowledgeable experts that she was able to get the treatment that she needed to abate her symptoms.
No Two Conditions Are The Same
One of the things we often hear about diseases, like cancer, is that no two people’s cancer are the same. Cancer is so intimately related to our genomes that each has its own fingerprint, so to speak. According to Therese B, the founder of Project Blue Beyond, the same applies to mental illness. You might be diagnosed with a particular condition, but there really is no one condition that adequately describes your symptoms. As this touching story about one man’s struggle with Schizophrenia at http://www.schizlife.com/louis-wains-schizophrenic-cats points out, every person’s experience of mental illness is informed by their life experiences.
Symptoms look different in every person, claims Therese and treatments that might have worked in the early stages of a disease, don’t always have an effect later on, as the condition develops. Therese says that she wished her friends and family would stop trying to put her depression in a box and realize that solutions are not one-size-fits-all.
Medication Can Make You Worse, Not Better
Modern mental health medicine is not particularly advanced. It’s based on the rather general idea that those who have mental health problems have a “chemical imbalance” in their brains. All they need is to be topped up with one neurotransmitter or another, and their symptoms will go away.
The problem with this is twofold. First off, these medicines usually only deal with symptoms, taking the edge off an episode, without actually addressing the root causes. And second, they come with side effects that are often worse than the symptoms they’re trying to treat.
Maun, F, was an intensive care nurse who was prescribed drugs for her mental illness. They left her feeling totally “flat,” without any emotion or any capacity to live her life as she intended. She had no drive in the bedroom, and she felt unmotivated all the time. What was worse, the drugs caused her kidneys to fail, making her feel physically sick.
There Are No Quick Fixes
When it comes to mental illness, it’s rarely a quick cleanup. Rather, people spend months, even years recovering. Melissa, an admin assistant, says that she has suffered from depression since the age of five. Now forty years old, she says that she deals with her condition a day at a time.
Mental Illness Can Wreak Havoc With Your Body
People who haven’t suffered from mental illness think that it is something that only affects your mind, but the truth is that it can affect your body too. The mind and body are linked in some meaningful ways: what affects one can easily affect the other.
Erin F discovered this the hard way, thanks to an eating disorder. She wound up eating so little food that she had a stroke at the age of 30. This then left her blind, she told https://www.buzzfeed.com.
Mental Illness Affects Your Social Life In A Big Way
Robert is a proofer reader who suffers from several conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder. He says that his illness precludes the very possibility of a relationship with a woman. Women, he says, always cite his various conditions as reasons why they can’t stay together, long term.
Staff Writer; Charles Harris