With the rise of mental health issues being reported each year, the need for more mental health professionals are prevalent. The problem is that there are not enough mental health professionals out there to help all of these people. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is about 552,000 mental health professionals in America, which is not a lot when you look at how many people struggle with mental health issues. According to Mental Health America, there is about 44 million adults dealing with mental health issues in America, and this does not even account for children and adolescence. What if I told you that you do not have to see a mental health professional to deal with some common mental health issues. Now what could I possibly mean by “common mental health” issues? Well let me tell you what I mean.
Common Mental Health Issues
When I say common mental health issues, I am referring to mental health issues that everyone eventually faces or deals with some time in their life. The issues that I am talking about is Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and Phobias. This will over how each of these issues develop and how they can be dealt with before they get too serious and have an effect on your mental health. Let us start off with depression first.
Depression
Depression has been an issue that people deal with many times in their lives. Females generally have a higher association of depression than males and are more common during adolescence and young adulthood. The main causes of depression include bullying, harassment (verbal or non-verbal), genetics, negative thinking patterns, brain chemistry, etc. while the main symptoms of depression include feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, not participating in regular activities, loss of appetite, and lack of energy. These feelings can be devastating to deal with on a daily basis as it prevents people from being productive, create meaningful relationships, and live a happier, healthier life. Now, I am not going to describe the risk factors of each of these issues because that is not the purpose of this post. This is just to inform you of what each issue is and what causes them.
How to Deal with Depression?
I’m not lying when I say this, but there are hundreds of ways that people can deal with depression. People can participate in activities that they enjoy doing, talk to friends, make a journal where they can write down their daily thoughts, change negative thinking patterns, learn a new hobby, exercise, meditate, etc. The list goes on and on with ways to deal with depression, but most people do not know what the best way to tackle these things to best help them. I will explain exactly what this is at the end of the post, so you can skip these parts if they are not as appealing to you. Now, going on to the issue of anxiety, stress, and phobias.
Anxiety, Stress and Phobias
I decided to put anxiety, stress, and phobias together because they are all related in some way. Picture someone dealing with anxiety and most likely they will be stressed. Someone feeling stressed would also be dealing with some form of anxiety. If someone is dealing with any kind of phobia, they are stressed and anxious about confronting that fear. These three mental health issues usually stem from situations and environments that we find unpleasant or unfavorable.
Let’s say that when you were young, you had a birthday party where your parents invited a clown to entertain everyone. The moment you saw the clothes the clown was wearing and the kind of makeup on their face, you were terrified. You never want to see that clown again and you begin to cry and run away. Now you have a fear of clowns and are terrified every time you think or come into contact with them.
The solution to anxiety, stress, and phobias is not about changing the environments and situations that bother us. It’s about how we think and interprets these events when they happen to us. The first thing to realize is that everyone deals with anxious moments, whether it is asking someone on a date, presenting in front of an audience, or meeting someone for the first time. Everyone deals with stressful situations, whether it is finishing a difficult project with minimal time, not having enough time to enjoy yourself at the end of the day, or angry about not getting enough sleep the night before.
Everyone has a fear that they tend to avoid, whether it is heights, spiders, or social situations. These situations are not as bad as it seems since everyone goes through them on a day to day basis, it just depends on how resilient we are in facing these problems. The ways to deal with these three issues is the same exact way that I had mentioned before with depression. All of these techniques are useful in getting over these mental health issues, but it all depends on how you use them and the process in doing so.
The Process
The major problem with people that try to improve themselves is that they lack self-discipline. Self-discipline is all about focusing on the long-term process of things and not on short-term results. This is generally what you hear about when people want to improve their physical health whether they would like to get in shape, lose weight, or gain muscle mass.
The same is true about mental health, but the challenging thing about that is: we can see the results of our physical activities and not so much of our mental activities. Results from our long-term process will make us keep going. We would see that things will only get better and better for us. It would not even matter how small our short-term results were. If we see no improvement, how likely do you think that we will keep going? Not very likely isn’t it.
This is why so many people seek help from mental health professionals as they look at it as a “guaranteed fix” or that the treatment will have a greater chance to be successful. Going to therapy or counseling can go a long way and help speed up the process, but the problem is that the person going for these services forget that it is still a “process in progress”.
Just because therapy or counseling is over, and you are getting better does not mean to tuck these techniques away and use them whenever you feel down again. You forget about the process that you had working in therapy or counseling and now you have to go back 1-2 years later, which costs a lot of money and waste precious time. The unfortunate thing about this is that mental health professionals are the ones that get the most blame when they did nothing wrong.
There is a reason why therapists and counselors say that the clients are the experts, not them because they are the ones that know most about themselves. Their main roles are to get an understanding on what you are going through, build a therapeutic relationship with you so that you can feel like you are in a safe, non-judgmental environment, and guide you through a treatment plan that you think is best for you. That is why the first few sessions can take a long time to get things going, they have no idea who you are and what you are coming in for.
You go through the whole therapy process and now you are back on your feet with a more positive aspect on life. No Problems, No Worries, No Stress! Everything is going great, until you encounter another problem that triggers a response from you that leads into depression, anxiety, stress, or fear and the whole process starts over.
You have all the tools to deal with this problem, but now your therapist or counselor is not there to help you go through it. They can’t guide you to the best solution, so you decide that there is nothing that you can do to fix them. The negative thoughts come back into your head and you feel like you cannot accomplish anything or do anything right. You got these tools for a reason right, so start by using one and see how it makes you feel for about a week or two. If you notice that nothing has changed and you still feel miserable, start over and try something else that might work better. If you notice a slight change in mood, then don’t stop. Keep going and going until you have full control over your thoughts. It’s time to let the environment or situation know who’s boss.
You have friends, family, a significant other, and much more that can help you stay on track. They want to see you succeed and get through this. They’ve all been through this and at a point in time. They have probably asked you for help on how to deal with something stressful in their lives. You know how to do it! You know you can do it! It’s time to take action and strap yourself in for the long process that awaits.
