Mental Health

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Mental Health by Mind Map: Mental Health

1. What is Mental Health?

1.1. Mental health relates to our emotional wellbeing - it is all about how we think, feel and behave.

1.2. Your mental health can affect your daily life, relationships and even your physical health. Mental health also includes a person's ability to enjoy life because of how they feel

1.3. Mental ill health feels just as bad, or worse, than any other illness – only you cannot see it.

2. How can we help?

2.1. Helping themselves

2.1.1. Interact with people every day

2.1.2. Be Active

2.1.3. Take notice of things around you

2.1.4. Set yourself targets

2.1.5. Talk and express how you are feeling

2.2. Help from others

2.2.1. Show support

2.2.2. Ask how you can help

2.2.3. Be Open minded, Non-judgemental and Listen

2.2.4. Have Trust and Respect between you both

2.2.5. Don't just talk about mental health

2.3. Treatments available to help relieve and help cope

2.3.1. Medication

2.3.2. Talking Therapies

2.3.2.1. Talking (psychological) treatments can help to overcome emotional difficulties and free yourself from self-destructive ways of feeling, thinking and behaving.

3. What might cause mental ill health?

3.1. Difficult Family Backgrounds

3.2. Stressful Life Events

3.3. Your Biochemistry

3.4. Genes

3.5. Physical Health Problems

3.6. Social Problems

4. Most Common Problems

4.1. Depression

4.1.1. Depression lowers your mood, and can make you feel hopeless, worthless, unmotivated and exhausted. It can affect sleep, appetite, libido and selfesteem, and interfere with daily activities and, sometimes, your physical health. This may set off a vicious cycle, because the worse you feel, the more depressed you are likely to get.

4.2. Anxiety

4.2.1. Anxiety can mean constant and unrealistic worry about any aspect of daily life. It may cause restlessness, sleeping problems and possibly physical symptoms; for example, an increased heart beat, stomach upset, muscle tension or feeling shaky.

4.3. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

4.3.1. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has two main parts: obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwelcome thoughts, ideas or urges that repeatedly appear in your mind; for example, thinking that you have been contaminated by dirt and germs, or worrying that you haven’t turned off the oven. Compulsions are repetitive activities that you feel you have to do.

4.4. Phobias

4.4.1. A fear becomes a phobia when you have an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object. You will often begin to organise your life around avoiding the thing that you fear.

4.5. Bi-Polar Disorder

4.5.1. If you have bipolar disorder you will experience swings in mood. During ‘manic’ episodes, you are likely to display overactive excited behaviour. At other times, you may go through long periods of being very depressed. There are different types of bipolar disorder which depend on how often these swings in mood occur and how severe they are.

4.6. Schizophrenia

4.6.1. Schizophrenia is a controversial diagnosis. Symptoms may include confused or jumbled thoughts, hearing voices and seeing and believing things that other people don’t share. If you have these symptoms you might also become confused and withdrawn. There is debate about whether schizophrenia is actually one condition or more a collection of symptoms that are not clearly related.

4.7. Eating Disorders

4.7.1. Eating disorders can be characterised by eating too much, or by eating too little. If you have an eating disorder you may deny yourself anything to eat, even when you are very hungry, or you may eat constantly, or binge. The subject of food, and how much you weigh, is likely to be on your mind all the time. Your eating disorder is likely to develop as a result of deeper issues in your life and is possibly a way of disguising emotional pain. Anorexia, bulimia, bingeing and compulsive eating are some of the most common eating disorders.

4.8. Personality Disorders

4.8.1. Generally speaking, personality doesn’t change very much. Yet it does develop as people go through different experiences in life, and as their circumstances change. If you have a personality disorder, you are likely to find it more difficult to change your patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, and will have a more limited range of emotions, attitudes and behaviours with which to cope with everyday life.

5. Common Behaviours

5.1. Self Harm

5.1.1. Self-harm is a way of expressing very deep distress. You may not know why you self-harm, but it can be a means of communicating what you can’t put into words, or even into thoughts, and has been described as an ‘inner scream’. After self-harming, you may feel better able to cope with life again, for a while, but the cause of your distress is unlikely to have gone away.

5.2. Panic Attacks

5.2.1. These are sudden, unexpected bouts of intense terror. If you experience an attack you may find it hard to breathe, and feel your heart beating hard. You may have a choking sensation, chest pain, begin to tremble or feel faint.

5.3. Suicidal Thoughts

5.3.1. It is common to have suicidal thoughts if you are experiencing mental health problems – especially if you have a diagnosis of depression, borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia. The deeper your depression, the more likely it is that you will consider killing yourself. However, you can help yourself and you can get help from other people. A great many people think about suicide, but the majority do not go on to kill themselves.