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If you’re like many people, you have a problematic relationship with mental illness, a stigma that isn’t helped by the media. But the truth is, mental health issues are more common than you might think. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans live with mental illness. In fact, about half of Americans receive a mental disorder diagnosis at some point in their lives.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Mental health treatment can help you live a happier, healthier life. Here are some top signs you need mental help from a professional mental health care provider.
15 Signs You Need Mental Help
1. You’re Having Difficulty Coping With Life
The first sign that a person may need help for mental health seems pretty obvious: You’re having difficulty coping with life. It’s an issue when you notice that you haven’t been able to function as well as you once did.
Another sign that it might be a mental health concern and not the typical struggles of life is if there doesn’t appear to be any reasonable explanation for your diminished coping skills, like a medical condition, the unexpected loss of a loved one, or loss of a job or other significant life events.
What’s important to consider is whether this is a concern for you, not whether someone else would struggle under similar circumstances. If it’s enough of a problem that you want to change, it’s enough to warrant seeking help.
2. You Avoid Spending Time With Friends and Family
Mental health disorders can be isolating, causing the individual to avoid spending time with friends and family. In some cases, they may avoid loved ones out of shame or guilt, while in others, socializing can feel overwhelming and exhausting, requiring more effort than the individual can put forth.
3. You Feel Excessive Anxiety
Anxiety and stress are common experiences that serve an evolutionary purpose — they lend urgency to your deadlines and keep you on your toes if you’re about to be eaten by a lion, for example. But anxiety that’s out of control has a massive detrimental impact on your health, from heart problems to high blood pressure to skin conditions.
When anxiety just won’t go away, it may be a sign of an anxiety disorder. Examples include being unable to sleep because you can’t stop replaying something you did wrong earlier in the day or deliberately avoiding certain places or situations because of the anxiety they cause.
You may not need to treat anxiety with medication if you don’t want to. A trained professional can teach you coping techniques to help keep your anxiety under control.
4. Your Friend Group Changes Often
For someone with a mental health disorder, forming close, consistent relationships can feel challenging. Conditions such as bipolar disorder can cause rapid mood changes, which can be difficult for friends to cope with. In some instances, an individual may seek out friends who understand the mental health disorder and can provide necessary support.
5. You’re Depressed, Unhappy or Apathetic
Everyone gets down from time to time. Sometimes, life deals you a bad hand. But sometimes, those blues can be a red flag for depression. When you think of a depressed person, you probably think of Eeyore — someone who’s tired all the time and always sad. In reality, one of the most commonly reported signs of depression isn’t sadness at all; it’s apathy.
Apathy is a feeling of overwhelming indifference to yourself, your life, and those around you, even toward people and things that previously excited you. It’s a lack of motivation to get out of bed in the morning and an inability to figure out why you care about something.
This is a common feature of depression and manifests in a wide variety of ways, from the stereotypical low energy and hopelessness to difficulty concentrating and sleeping issues. It can show up as poor hygiene habits and peculiar eating because you just can’t bring yourself to care. It can even show up as substance abuse.
And the truth is, depression isn’t sadness. Someone who’s sad can drag themselves out of it or remove themselves from the situation. Someone who’s depressed can’t overcome their emotions, no matter how much they might want to. That’s where a professional can help.
6. You Experience Excessive or Inexplicable Anger or Irritability
One of the less-talked-about signs of mental illness (especially depression) is anger and irritability. It’s true that everyone gets angry or irritable from time to time. Some days don’t go your way. Your coworkers are being unnecessarily difficult, your kids aren’t listening to a word you say, you hit every red light, and you spill your coffee.
Anger becomes a problem when it manifests as disproportionate outbursts, significant chronic irritability, or hostility toward people who haven’t done anything to anger you. Repressed anger and open hostility aren’t just stressors on your relationships; they’re also detrimental to your physical health. They can worsen anxiety, weaken your immune system, and increase your risk of heart attack and stroke.
7. You’re Stuck in a Traumatic Event
Trauma is the emotional equivalent of an atom bomb. It’s destructive and wide-reaching and shakes you to your core. Some people bounce back from trauma without the need for additional help. However, some people need more support than loved ones alone can provide.
Are you stuck reliving traumatic events? Are traumatic images branded in your brain and won’t turn off? Do certain experiences, situations, places, or objects throw you back to a traumatic experience? Are you feeling like you’re trapped in a horrible moment without a means to escape?
If you’re fighting to get through trauma and finding yourself turning towards unhealthy coping mechanisms, it may be time to seek professional help.
8. You See Weight or Appetite Changes
Your weight changes every day and fluctuates throughout your life. But when these appetite or weight changes come without warning or explanation, there’s cause for concern.
Are you finding you can’t finish a lunch you used to devour readily, or you’re hungrier than usual? Do you find yourself eating at unusual times or seeking out different foods than normal?
If you can’t motivate yourself to prepare food and catch yourself grazing on a random collection of foods that are easy to grab, it could be a sign of depression. Alternately, if you find you’re starving but have no appetite when you sit down to eat, it could be a symptom of out-of-control anxiety.
9. You Have Issues With Finding or Maintaining Employment
Having difficulty finding or maintaining a job is a key sign you need mental help. Despite legal protections, many people living with mental health disorders experience discriminatory workplace practices, making it challenging to maintain a job. Additionally, certain illnesses can result in low concentration and energy levels, impacting overall job performance.
10. You Have an Unusual or Unhealthy Relationship to Food
Another symptom that indicates someone needs help for a mental disorder is that they have an unhealthy relationship with food. The stereotype of eating disorders usually goes like this: High-achieving, perfectionist, thin teenage girls stay skinny by avoiding food. The truth is that eating disorders are more complex than that, and you can have disordered eating patterns without a full-blown eating disorder.
A distorted body image is one of the typical early signs of an eating disorder. This is often described as perceiving yourself as fat even if you aren’t, but it also involves hyperawareness of your own appearance and believing others are paying more attention to your appearance than they actually are.
Another sign of disordered eating is a rigid set of rules around food that impacts your ability to eat with or around others. For example, you’re not allowed to eat outside of certain specific times, or you’re not allowed to eat certain foods. You may have strict rules about how much food you’re allowed to take in.
This doesn’t just apply to restrictive eating, either. Binge eating (eating excessive amounts of food at one time) is a less-discussed but equally serious form of disordered eating. The same is true of binge-purge cycles in bulimia.
Regardless of the specific type, eating disorders have serious long-term health implications, from reduced circulation to heart problems to reproductive health.
11. You’ve Become Involved With the Legal System
Run-ins with the legal system can point to the need for mental health treatment. People with mental health conditions may have challenges with maintaining consistent employment or stable housing. As a result, they may experience evictions or lawsuits related to defaults on debt payments.
Additionally, mental illnesses, such as ADHD and bipolar disorder, can cause impaired judgment and impulsive decisions, leading to actions that result in legal consequences.
Finally, there’s a strong correlation between mental health issues and substance abuse. Individuals may use drugs or alcohol as coping mechanisms, which can lead to substance-related offenses such as possession charges and DUIs.
12. You Experience Significant Changes to Your Sleep Patterns
Another symptom that indicates someone needs help for a mental disorder is experiencing disrupted sleep patterns. Generally, humans need 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night to function properly. Persistent and inexplicable changes to your sleeping habits or patterns can be a sign of mental health issues.
The link between anxiety and sleeping problems is one you’re probably already familiar with: difficulty falling asleep due to repeated anxious thoughts, difficulty staying asleep, stressful dreams, etc.
While the link between depression and sleeping disorders isn’t as well-known, medical professionals have found strong connections between the two. In fact, one study demonstrated that insomnia is a significant predictor of depression, and addressing sleep disturbances is necessary for effective treatment.
Depression changes the actual structure of your brain patterns during sleep. Sleep continuity and sleep efficiency in depressed patients are reduced, and while the duration of the first REM (rapid eye movement) is increased, overall REM latency is decreased. If you notice significant changes to your sleeping patterns (unable to fall asleep or stay asleep, sleeping at odd hours, etc.), talk to a doctor.
13. You’re Using Substances to Cope
When everything else in your head seems to be going haywire, or you can’t seem to get a handle on your life, you might notice a few concerning patterns.
Your evening happy hour cocktail becomes three. You start smoking again, or you smoke more than before. You find yourself reaching for the medicine cabinet to quiet your brain down, or you begin seeking something stronger than what’s in your medicine cabinet.
There’s a strong and concerning link between substance abuse and mental health disorders, especially when individuals feel they can’t talk about mental health issues or don’t have ready access to treatment.
14. You Have Difficulty Remembering Things
One of the signs that you need mental help is having difficulty recalling memories and retaining new information. Chronic mental health disorders can lead to structural changes in the brain, changing how it processes and stores information.
For example, high levels of stress and anxiety can interfere with how the brain retrieves memories, and for those living with conditions such as depression, lower levels of dopamine and serotonin can prevent the brain from learning new information.
15. You Are Contemplating Suicide
Suicidal thoughts and actions are primarily associated with mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder, but they can result from other circumstances, such as the sudden loss of a job or a particularly difficult divorce.
Suicidal ideation can generally be classed in one of two categories: passive and active. Active suicidal ideation is the type you’ve probably heard about the most. This is when someone has an existing, pressing wish to die and has taken concrete steps toward this, such as forming a plan, giving away possessions, or saying goodbye to loved ones.
Passive suicidal ideation means an individual thinks about their death regularly and may even consider how they could end their life but hasn’t taken any steps to do so or doesn’t have a pressing need to do so.
If you are considering suicide, actively or passively, seek help immediately. Find a loved one or a professional you trust to listen to your whole story and respond helpfully.
If You Need Mental Health Treatment
If you do need mental health treatment, you have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re taking the steps you need to live a fuller, healthier life.
FHE offers a range of mental health rehabilitation services, including residential, outpatient, and aftercare. If you’d like to speak with us about what we can do to help, don’t hesitate to contact us. Use our contact page to get in touch about your options.
