Mental Illness during Pandemic.
Covid19 pandemic hit the masses most severely mentally. The trauma from looking for the medicine, hospital beds to dealing with the mass of dead bodies, from being left jobless to mass migration and suffering. These all circumstances severely impacted our mental state. A tremendous number of people have lost their dear ones. And some are fighting for their life. While their loved ones and family are busy in the constant search of medicines and oxygen cylinders. Those who are safe are also suffering from mental illness by looking at their environment. Full of grief, devastation. This time is very hard. And financial crisis makes this problem. So many families especially of the lower class. Left without money and aid. Those who earn daily and labor are struggling a lot. These financial bottlenecks resulted in mental illness. Especially those students who are handling the digital divide. Faces stress and mental illness. All students couldn’t afford online education due to a lack of digital gadgets. That acts as a hindrance to the growth and education of unprivileged students. The cost of academic education and institution creates a financial burden for the students and the family. some can deal with it. But those who couldn’t eventually end up dropping out there college and institute. That leads to mental stress among the students. Recently, the cases of suicide by students increase manifold. That shows how mentally covid have impacted the students. Therefore cases of suicides are reported manifold. Students who are privilege enough. Also facing mental trauma. Online education also created an additional problem, technical glitches, electricity problems, access to devices, are major problems related to online education. That cause mental stress, headache as well as eyesight problems. This problem can be overcome through everyone’s participation. All need to contribute. By providing financial aid to the needy. And by including in the conversation as much as possible with our friends and family in this hard time. Chatting with each other acts as a medicine to cure the ailment of mental stress.
Tag: Mental illnesses
EATING DISORDERS
We will in a world where being thin is considered to be the beauty standard and anything other than thin is fat. People openly comment and advise on how to lose weight. So people in the process of being thin some develop eating disorders. Eating disorders are a type of mental disorder which abnormal eating behaviour negatively affects ones physical and mental health. People tend to assume that eating disorders are a lifestyle choice or that people choose to have an eating disorder. The eating disorders are of different types. Some range from extreme overeating and extreme restrictive eating. There are different types of eating disorders. But there are two main types, Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa.
Anorexia Nervosa is a type of eating disorder where people perceive that they are overweight, they also have bad self-esteem where they constantly feel fat and have to lose weight. People suffering from anorexia nervosa restrict their diet or vomit or use a laxative to force out the food in their system. Because they don’t want to gain weight, they force out food. Anorexia Nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental health disorders. Their diets are always restrictive with less calorie intake. Because they don’t eat a nutrition meal, they are very thin and have a deep fear of gaining weight. They consider themselves as overweight and continue to start themselves despite life-threatening starvation. The symptoms of the disorder are seen over a while. Mild anemia, brittle hair and nail and growth of fine hairs are one of the first symptoms seen. The growth of the fine is to keep the body warm when there is no fat to keep the body warm. Severe constipation, low blood pressure and multiple organ failure, the person will feel cold all the time and infertility are major symptoms the patients will face.
Bulimia Nervosa is an eating disorder where people tend to overeat large amounts of food with control over their eating habit. People suffering from Bulimia Nervosa eat large amounts of food and overcompensate by self-induced vomiting, over the use of laxatives to force the food out, fasting for long times. They overeat and then use extreme methods to get rid of it. They consider themselves as overweight and have self-perceived flaws. They always fear of gaining weight. They have a chronic swollen throat because of self-induced vomiting. They also have swollen salivary glands of self-induced vomiting. Acid induced reflex and intestinal distress and irritation from the use of laxatives. Long term effects are electrolyte imbalance which can lead to a stroke from there a heart attack; tooth enamel can become overly sensitive because of stomach acid because of self-induced vomiting
Eating disorders can affect people of all genders, ages and racial backgrounds. They usually start in the teenage year of a patient. There are many treatments for eating disorders.
People suffering from eating disorders have a higher risk of depression and suicidal tendencies. The treatments are usually psychotherapies and medications. To reduce the tendencies of self-induced vomiting and binge eating, Cognitive behavioural therapy is a frequently used therapy tool to help the patients acknowledge their unhealthy patterns of eating behaviour. Some medications are prescribed by the psychiatrist.
BODY DYSMORPHIC DISORDER
We all live in a judgmental society where our neighbourhood aunties tell us too eat more or eat less, maybe if we tried putting curd on our face as she told then well be fair or whiter or less brown to be precise, she always knows what’s best because she is older than all of us. All of these unwanted suggestions can lower our self-esteem when they point out your flaws you didn’t know existed. This just leads to us obsessing over our flaws. We all most of the times don’t like we see in the mirror but people who are suffering from body dysmorphic disorder obsess over their flaws on a specific body part which is usually exaggerated in their minds. This is body dysmorphia. Body dysmorphia or Body Dysmorphic Disorder [BDD] is a mental health disorder where you focus obsessively over your perceived flaws; the flaws might not be visible to others, this causes embarrassment, anxiety and leads to you being ashamed in public settings. Because the flaw is perceived its importance is exaggerated this leads to repetitive behaviour or people tend to avoid public settings or certain social engagements. It means repeatedly checking your appearance in the mirror, or seeking constant validation and repeated grooming oneself. Body Dysmorphic Disorder affects 0.7% to 2.4% of the population.
The disease was first reported in 1886 by Enrico Morselli, he named it Dysmorphophobia. It was first diagnosed as a somatoform but later reclassified as an obsessive-compulsive disorder. These people tend to indulge in behaviours which are directed towards fixing or masking their perceived flaw, they always compare their appearances with others, and they undergo cosmetic procedures with little to no satisfaction from the procedure. They also constantly think that others notice or make fun of their perceived flaw. Body Dysmorphic Disorder can be due to different factors, it develops during early adolescence, it might stem from social, cultural standards, psychological or trauma or abuse or bullying. It causes introversion and negative body image. Suicidal thoughts and depression are common in BDD. BDD also causes mood swings, depression, and the repetitive behaviour to mask their flaws causes’ obsessive-compulsive disorder to the patient, eating disorders to lose weight or to gain their perfect weight or to undergo multiple cosmetic surgeries.
BDD can be treated but most individuals tend to hide their obsessive disorders.
The conditions are hugely misdiagnosed because people are not open about it.
The common treatment for body dysmorphic disorder is Cognitive behavioural therapy is the most successful in treating BDD. Because BDD comes with an array of other disorders it’s a little difficult to treat but understandable. Cognitive-behavioural therapy provides a good mechanism where you can turn negative thoughts and irrational thoughts into positive thoughts. Responsive prevention in CBT teaches to resist the urge to mask their perceived flaw and how to seek validation from others and to grow confident. One of the ways to understand this disorder is that everyone is different and it’s no one’s business to tell others how to look or eat. Every person is beautiful in one or the other way and that not everyone is conventionally beautiful. So, be confident and find a niche for yourself.
Mental Health: Are We Doing Enough?
“No one wishes to have dark days, sleepless nights, grumpy mornings and this endless dark tunnel with no sign that it ever ends. Mental illnesses aren’t a choice.”
Mental illnesses are the unseen, unheard, silent killers. It’s the pain that’s too much to cope with, too hard to deal with and so misunderstood. You can’t escape it no matter how hard you try, because it follows you around like a black shadow that’s on the inside, eating you.
There isn’t anything tragically beautiful about them, it’s just tragic. It’s not sad songs and poetry, shy glances or drowning in the bath. It’s not ghostly white skin tainted by charcoal circles under sad eyes and large purple bruises stretching viciously up your arms. It isn’t lonely walks, vacant coffee shops or smoking dusty cigarettes.
Depression is unwashed clothes and flaking skin. It’s over eating and the inability to even get out of bed. It’s giving up on yourself and not taking pride in your appearance anymore. It’s empty inboxes, bursts of anger and late night tears. It’s a feeling of disgust within yourself that makes you want to tear off your own skin just so you can feel clean. It’s uncertainty and confusion. It’s losing weight, long showers and greasy hair. It’s constantly wishing you could be somewhere or someone else. It’s losing the will to even live.
Similarly, anxiety isn’t just sweating and shaking and shortness of breath. It’s also feeling like you have no control over your life and there is a knot in your stomach and you feel like your world is crashing down completely and you have to sit there and act like you’re fine.
Being bipolar is like being on a roller coaster ride. Sometimes you can predict drop offs and others you just have to hang on because the next turn sends you into an unexpected spiral. Sometimes you are laughing and throwing your hands in the air and then other times you are clinging, simply holding on for dear life screaming it the top of your lungs.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorders are like unpredictable demons of your own mind, where the soul is a puppet of your own fears, where a line between right and wrong gets blurred, where your true identity disappears only in you, where you get accosted for thousands of pointless known questions, where you get beaten every single second by your own self, where everyone seems fine except you, where regret is smaller word for ‘reassurance’, where mind goes dead and breathing continues, where you stuck in a small box full of nightmares.
So, are we doing enough about mental health? Long answer short, no.
The first and foremost reason for India to lose its mental health is the lack of awareness and sensitivity about the issue. There is a big stigma around people suffering from any kind of mental health issues. They are often tagged as ‘lunatics’ by the society. This leads to a vicious cycle of shame, suffering and isolation of the patients. Also, there is a serious shortage of mental healthcare workforce in India.
One of the biggest hurdles in addressing mental health is the measurement of objective information. With other illnesses, there are lab reports, X-rays, CT scan, MRI, etc. which are used for identification of illnesses. In case of mental health, such objective parameters aren’t available. Secondly, despite it’s enormous social burden, mental health remains a taboo subject that is susceptible to age-old stigmas, prejudices and fears. Because people can’t see a physical deformity they think there’s no substance to your illness. People often associate it with pretending and take it lightly in less developed states. Even highly educated people react the same way and lack empathy. They’ll belittle mental illnesses and blame it on the sufferer’s personality. Thus, in our country, the discovery of a mental illness is often followed by denial and hesitation to seek help. Thirdly, the output of the same disease or problem varies significantly from person to person, making it very subjective. Thus, needless to say, the path towards addressing and normalizing discussions about mental health is indeed a rocky one.
Mental health stigma is not only a culturally learned aversion to discussing mental illness, it is also the subsequent ignorance in the general population about how to recognize stigma in everyday life or an institutional level. And this stigma is can be soul damaging. It’s also personal and unique to the individual, yet it encourages society to treat the ones suffering from it as: Dangerous. Expendable. Useless. Invisible. To dismantle stigma we have to look much deeper at the specific problems and manifestations of it. How does stigma penetrate into the scientific publications and research? What type of education are we given on mental health in public education? All of these more nuanced questions give us routes to comparison and action. I believe it is in these details that stigma exists and where it must be sought if we are to dismantle it.
We, as a society, need to learn to treat people with mental illnesses with compassion rather than telling them that their brain is defective.
To build a better world we need to consciously design a better environment for all of humanity, one in which all the choices we have are good options. What we have now is a dynamic that makes people sick and then blames them for being sick. This world of fear and coercion can be swapped for one of love and cooperation, a world that brings us all health and happiness in all our different and wonderful cultures.
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