Depression, Anxiety and Bipolar disorder.

     This week I want to shift gears a bit and talk about mental illnesses. The words mental health and mental illness are related however they not interchangeable. Mental health is about mental well-being & mental illness is an illness that affects the way people think, act, feel and or interact with others.

     I would like to talk about a few tips on spotting mental illnesses in our friends/family members and people we interact with. The three mental illnesses I will be showing the signs for are depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. I think it’s important to know these signs in others to offer help and in some cases better understand what someone else is going through. I’m also going to talk about these mental illnesses that I have seen personally.

Depression- A mental health disorder characterized by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life.

 

• Lack of energy or feeling tired all the time
• Restlessness and agitation
• Having difficulty sleeping (or sleeping more than usual)
• Change in appetite
• Smoking and/or drinking more than usual, or using drugs
• Lack of interest in sex
• Unexplained physical aches and pains
• Self-harming

 

On a personal note, I have been battling with depression my whole life, my mom told me she knows when I’m feeling down because I wouldn’t sing anymore, when I was a kid, I would sing all the time and when I was dealing with my depression, I didn’t have the energy to sing anymore. It could be something as small as that. Depression changes how people behave on a daily basis. I would also have such a lack of energy that I would stay in bed all day because I felt too tired and I would sleep for 12-15 hours at a time and would wake up not feeling rested.

 

Anxiety- A mental health disorder characterized by feelings of worry, anxiety, or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one's daily activities

 

· Excessive worrying

· Panic attacks

· Irritability

· Restlessness

· Fatigue

· Difficulty concentrating

· Tense muscles

· Trouble falling asleep and or staying asleep

· Avoiding social situations

 

Again speaking on a personal note I have been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. Sometimes my worrying can be so excessive that I do something known as spiraling. I would be worried about an upcoming exam, which would lead to thoughts of failing the class, which would lead to having to drop out of university, which would lead to my family disowning me which I rationally knew wouldn’t happen but my anxiety made me believe it would happen, and finally resulting in thinking that I would become homeless and have to live on the streets. My fear of failing the test had grown so strong that it felt like a matter of life and death to pass that exam. My anxiety also makes me feel extremely irritated sometimes I get so irritated that I can’t even take a trip to the grocery store without hating the entire human population just because someone was walking too slowly or lingering in front of an item I needed to get.

 

Both depression and anxiety are feelings we all have but it is important to ask “Do these feelings effect my everyday life?” and when I say effect my everyday life I mean do these feelings stop or get in the way of performing tasks that I’ve successfully completed in the past with minimal effort. An example could be that a person with depression shows a lack of interest in activities, is that lack of interest so strong that the person isn’t just bored but they no longer get joy out of something that they recently enjoyed. Is the lack of interest so strong that person just stays in bed all day?  

 

Bipolar disorder- A disorder associated with episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.

- Manic and depressive episodes:

The word manic in this sense means feeling extremely good, so good that the person doesn’t sleep for days on end, makes reckless decisions etc.  

- Manic episode include three or more of these symptoms:

· Abnormally upbeat, jumpy or wired

· Increased activity, energy or agitation

· Exaggerated sense of well-being and self-confidence (euphoria)

· Decreased need for sleep

· Unusual talkativeness

· Racing thoughts

· Distractibility

-The depressive episodes show the signs of depression, strong enough to disrupt daily activities. These depressive episodes usually happen right after a manic episode, so this person goes from feeling on top of the world to the deepest lows.

 

A personal experience I have with bipolar there was a person close to me when I was a young child (I don’t want to expose them so I won’t say who) who was dealing with bipolar disorder and as a young child I didn’t know that this behavior was strange I just thought that is who they are. I would spend days with this person and some of the days were very go go go! We would go shopping and to the zoo and to the movies all in one day, and there were other days when they wouldn’t want to get out of bed and they would just put on cartoons for me and I would leave them alone, like I said as a young child I didn’t know going from one extreme to the other wasn’t a normal thing I just did whatever that person told me to do that day.

 

   Overall you aren’t alone in feeling these emotions and or knowing someone who has, open conversations about mental illnesses is one step forward to ending the stigma around mental illnesses.