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Understanding mental health is an essential step toward reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek support when they need it. Below is an overview of several common mental health disorders, each with its own signs, symptoms, and challenges. By learning more about these conditions, we can better recognize what ourselves or others may be experiencing and foster a more compassionate, informed community, while also debunking myths and stigmas that surround mental health ----> Debunking Mental Health Myths
Common Challenges
Anxiety
Anxiety is a broad term that describes a feeling of fear, stress, and discomfort and can be separated into more specific categories. Symptoms can include heart palpitations, shortness of breath, muscle tension, cold or sweaty hands, dry mouth, and nausea.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
This is the most common type of anxiety. People with this condition feel persistent and excessive worry about everyday life without a specific trigger. Symptoms of this condition include dissociate controlling anxiety, restlessness, fatigue and muscle tension.
Panic Disorder
Panic disorder is when a person has sudden and persistent panic attacks as well as chest pain and shortness of breath.
Social Anxiety Disorder
Experiencing intense and ongoing fear of being judged negatively or being watched by others.
Agoraphobia
An intense fear of being overwhelmed or unable to escape to get help. People with this condition typically avoid new places, unfamiliar situations, enclosed spaces, like crowds or even placed outside their home.
Depression
Depression is a constant feeling of sadness, emptiness or hopelessness. Many times people lose interest in activities they once enjoyed and have significant changes in their appetite. Some also find themselves sleeping too little or too much and have decreased energy. You might feel worthless or excessive guilt and might even have thoughts of death and suicide.
PTSD
PTSD stands for post-traumatic-stress-disorder and it is a psychiatric condition that can occur after someone has experienced or whitenessed a traumatic event. This event is one that is emotionally or physically harmful/life-threatening. People with PTSD may experience repeated distressing memories or flashbacks of the event, which can cause panic. Others may avoid reminders of the event like people, places, or activities that trigger distressing memories. They may present with depressive symptoms or even feel irritated and have angry outbursts.
OCD
OCD stands for obsessive-compulsive disorder and it is a condition where people experience unwanted intrusive thoughts, or obsessions. They also feel the need to perform repetitive tasks to prevent something bad from occurring. These symptoms can be very exhausting and also time consuming which disrupts their daily life. There are different types of OCD based on different obsessions.
Bipolar
This is a mental condition characterized by extreme shifts in mood and energy levels. On one end, a person can experience hypomania (high energy/euphoria) to depression on the other end (hopelessness). Each episode can last for days at a time and several disrupt a person's relationships and daily life.
Eating Disorders
Many people that develop eating disorders do so as a result of body image satisfaction, other mental health conditions, like OCD, major trauma, or even weight stigma and bullying. There are three main types of eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, and Binge Eating. Eating disorders can lead to permanent damage to your heart, digestive system, bones, teeth, and mouth if your body is lacking vital nutrients for an extended period of time.
Anorexia Nervosa
An intense fear of being overwhelmed or unable to escape to get help. People with this condition typically avoid new places, unfamiliar situations, enclosed spaces, like crowds or even placed outside their home.
Bulimia
People struggling with Bulimia will sporadically eat a lot of food, binging, and then force themselves to vomit which is known as purging. Sometimes instead of purging a person might do extreme exercise or fasting in between binges.
Debunking Mental Health Myths
Myth: Mental health problems are rare
Fact: 1 in 7 people in the world live with a mental health disorder, you are not alone!
Myth: Mental illness is a sign of weakness
Fact: Mental health disorders come from a combination of factors including genetics, brain chemistry, family history, and life experiences, they are definitely not a sign of weakness.
Myth: Medicine is the only way to treat mental health disorders
Fact: While medication is one option, there are many other effective treatments including therapy and learning different coping skills that can make a huge difference
Myth: You can either be mentally healthy or mentally ill
Fact: Mental health is a spectrum and you can experience different challenges to varying degrees
Myth: Once you have a mental illness, you will never recover
Fact: Mental health conditions are treatable and sometimes even curable, recovery is possible
Myth: Mental health progress is linear
Fact: Progress is almost never linear, it's normal to have setbacks, and they don’t mean you aren't making progress.