Lifestyle

Mental health and why we need to be proactive about mental health


We will do anything to make the physical space in which we live beautiful. We will clean out our closets, remove clutter and wash our windows. We will swap the old with the new and make new. We will do all this and not even give it a second thought.

But our mind – the only space we can’t really leave – often receives less love and attention, less priority than our physical space. Our minds are hidden, many illnesses are invisible, and as such, our mental health is often off our priority list.

As the snow melts and we’re all thinking about how to make the most of our longer sunny days, I have something to add to our spring project list: improving our mental health.

To focus on the urgent need to prioritize our mental health, one statistic:

A key finding from Mental Health America Report for 2019 states that more than half of adults in the United States with mental illness do not receive treatment. This number totals more than 27 million people who are not receiving treatment because of their emotional struggles, and it does not include adolescents, nor does it reflect the hardships caused by the pandemic.

Perhaps part of the difference between those who have the disease and those who receive professional treatment is the nomenclature. Acknowledging anxiety or depression is one thing, but using the term “mental illness” is somehow more prescriptive, as if by acknowledging that you have mental illness, you are confront something that you might have previously hidden. To me, this seems to be part of the reason why a staggering 27 million adults go untreated; because the words we use to talk about mental illness make people who are already reluctant to admit that they are struggling.

But we need to acknowledge this. We need to treat our minds like we treat our homes and make sure they are clean and sturdy, prepared to keep us safe. And one of the best ways to do this is with the help of an expert.

To illustrate the power of professional help, a story:

My daughter is ten months old. Her tiny body blistered like hot stones that the masseuse delicately places down your spine. Her post-nap coma was heightened by a fever. I put her on my bed to check on her, and she started having seizures. My baby had a seizure and I thought he was going to die. It was the longest two minutes of my life.

As soon as the paramedics arrived and tied her to the ambulance, I knew she was most likely having a febrile seizure, which the ER doctor told me had a huge impact on her psyche. a witness rather than the child’s body. Even so, the trauma of the experience lingers. This was four years ago.

A few months after the seizure (she had another one 11 days later), I visited my midwife and I told her about the horror I had experienced during the contractions. jerk. She suggested that I see a therapist and she made an urgent referral for me to be seen immediately.

I will digress here saying that people should be lucky to have medical intervention like this. If I hadn’t been pushed toward a therapist, I might not have found one until my anxiety had become even more crippling. But I saw a therapist then, and I still see her today every two weeks. I still talk about the seizures. I just uploaded them this week. The seizures, which lasted only five minutes of my life, gripped me so brutally that I still have to endure them. When my children got sick, as the pandemic swept the planet, my anxiety increased.

But I’m doing well, and I know this is because I prioritize my mental health. Specifically, this is due to therapy.

Therapy requires some of our most precious finite resources — time and money. For me, the reason why some people oppose it. However, I would argue that our mental health is just as important as a resource and one worthy of all of our other resources. Fortunately, the proliferation of teletherapy platforms has helped to eliminate inaccessibility by making therapy more lifestyle-friendly, requiring less time and often less money. with traditional therapy.

Forbes analyzed different online therapy platforms, weighing cost, ease, and other features, in this summaryif teletherapy is what you’re interested in.

Cleansing our mental health is more than just adding therapy to our list of spring projects. It also means give us rest when we need them, exercise regularly and take the time to nurture our relationships. Mostly, it means putting our mental health at the top of our priority list.

We are all better off — each one of us — when we take care of our mental health.

We are all better off — each one of us — when we take care of our mental health. I’m no statistician but I imagine that very often when people need therapy, they need an outside push before they pursue it. Sometimes you just need a stranger to say, Take care of your mental health. I hope I can be that party out there for you.

So to send a message home, a reminder:

Please, take care of your mind. Add it to your list. Treat it as if it were your home. Because, of course, it is.





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