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Mental Health Disorders Are Usually Due To A Single Cause | Healthier Me Today! Mental disorders are known as mental conditions that affect your thinking, feeling, mood, and behavior. They may happen on occasion or be long-lasting. They can affect your ability to “normally” relate to others and function each and every day.

Mental Disorders are Usually Due to a Single Cause – You Should Know About Mental Disorders!

• Anxiety disorders
• Depression
• bipolar disorder
• Eating disorders
• Personality disorders
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Psychotic disorders

What causes mental disorders? – Mental health disorders are usually due to a single cause

There is still no single cause or reason for mental illness. However, there are several factors that can contribute to the risk for mental illness:

• Your genes and family history
• Your life experiences
• A traumatic brain injury
• Feelings such as isolation
• A medical condition such as cancer
• Use of alcohol or recreational drugs
• Biological factors

Mental illnesses, in general, are caused by a variety of genetic and environmental factors. Character flaws do not cause mental disorders. 

Who is at risk for mental disorders?

Mental illness can, unfortunately, affect anyone regardless of age, gender, income, social status, race, religion, sexual orientation, background, or another aspect of cultural identity.

Mental illness is considered more common in people who have relatives struggling with any form of mental illness! In addition, exposure to environmental stress, inflammatory conditions, toxins, alcohol, or drugs while in the womb can sometimes be linked to a mental illness.

Mental Health Disorders Disrupt Everyday Activities – Seeing a Doctor!

If you or anyone you know are showing any signs or symptoms of any type of mental illness, see your health care provider or mental health professional. Most mental conditions will unfortunately not improve on their own; they need treatments or therapy sessions. If untreated, a mental condition could deteriorate and cause severe damage to your mental and even physical health!

The steps to getting a diagnosis include:

• A medical history
• A physical exam and lab tests
• A psychological evaluation. 

You will answer questions about what you are thinking and what you are feeling, and they will examine your everyday behavior. Untreated mental illness can cause emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems. 

Complications sometimes linked to mental illness include:

• Unhappy the entire time
• Causing family conflict
• Relationship difficulties
• Social isolation
• Problems with tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs
• A Form of Homelessness
• Harm to others

What are the treatments for mental disorders?

Treatments depend on which mental disorder you have and how serious it is. You and your health care provider will work on a treatment plan just for you. It involves some type of physical and mental therapy. You may also take different types of medicines to see what works best with your disorder.

There could be a case where more intensive treatment depends on how bad your disorder is. Being sent to a psychiatric hospital for professional help may be necessary. The main reason for this could be because of severe mental illness complications, and medication can’t work. You will go for therapy and get the proper help you need. You will be sent there because you are at risk of hurting yourself or someone else near you.

Prevention Is Important

As of now, medical professionals have found no certain way to prevent mental illness. However, there are few steps you could take to control stress, increase your self-control, and boosting lower self-esteem that can aid keep your symptoms under control—working with your doctor or therapist to learn what triggers your mental health symptoms.

Make a plan to know what to do if your symptoms return. Don’t skip your doctor’s checkups or skip visits to your primary care provider, especially if you aren’t feeling well. Mental health disorders can be harder to treat if you wait until your symptoms get worse. Enough sleep and a good diet combined with some physical activity are extremely important when you have a mental health disorder.

It can make you feel better until your next trip to the doctor or your next counseling session. Ensure you take good care of yourself even when you don’t feel like it.

Mental Health Disorders are Usually Due to a Single Cause

With mental illness, suicidal thoughts can be an unwanted but common repercussion! If you think you may hurt yourself, it’s imperative that you seek help from a friend, family member, or medical professional! Go on google and search your nearest hospital or emergency room to call for help, or dial one of your suicide hotline numbers in your area to get the help you need.

They are there for a reason. That reason is to guide you through your thoughts and help you stop thinking about hurting yourself or killing yourself. If there is someone you know that is showing signs of mental illness, ensure that you have an open and honest discussion with them about your concerns.

It’s unlikely that you can force someone to get professional help, but you can offer encouragement and support from your side so that they can see that they are loved, someone wants to help them, and someone cares for them and how they are feeling.

You can help your loved one find a qualified mental health professional and make an appointment if you don’t know what to say to them about what’s going on inside of their heart and mind.

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Borderline personality disorder VS bipolar – What you should know! BPD is characterized by extreme mood swings, unstable relationships, and impulsiveness. Borderline Personality Disorder patients suffer from low self-esteem and frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment, which leads to impulsive actions such as self-harming and suicidal behaviours.

Borderline personality disorder symptoms are often triggered by conflict in relationships. People with borderline personality disorder would likely have suffered from mild to extreme childhood trauma, and this could be a severe trigger!

Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms:

• Unstable relationships
• Self-destructive behaviours
• Self-Harm
• Emotional Swings
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Explosive Anger
• Feeling out of touch with reality

Treatment:

Treatment mainly involves specific forms of therapy, such as behaviour therapy or therapy that is aimed at helping people manage impulses like:

• Suicidal urges
• Tendencies to harm when upset
• Feelings of distress, anger, and emotional oversensitivity to interactions with people.

Medications can be used to help with these symptoms. Although they are not always effective with some people and are not considered to be the main focus of treatment for borderline personality disorder, doctors usually recommend getting therapy before giving out daily medication, depending on how severe the symptoms are in the person with the disorder. Sometimes the doctor recommends the patient with the disorder should stay a few nights in the hospital for supervision just so the doctors know what they are dealing with and they can discuss how to treat it.

What Is Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression; it causes swings in mood, energy and the ability to function during the day.

BPD and bipolar disorders are often talked of as interchangeably, but they are not the same thing in the medical community. They can both cause impulsive behaviour outside of the person’s normal habits, but there are some clear differences.

Bipolar Disorder Symptoms:

• Feeling sad, hopeless or irritable for a majority of your time!
• No energy to do anything
• Difficulty concentrating and remembering things
• Loss of interest in the things you enjoyed
• Feeling empty or worthless
• Feeling guilt and despair
• Self-doubt 

These symptoms can last for days and weeks, even months.

Bipolar disorder can look very different with different people depending on how bad the person with bipolar disorder has it.

Depression associated with bipolar disorder can look like depression on its own. Both disorders cause a lot of different moods. People with bipolar disorder may have periods of time where they don’t appear to be showing unusual behaviour to other people.

People with a borderline personality disorder don’t seem to have a baseline personality between each episode like those with bipolar. However, it has a consistent effect on their everyday life. 

Identifying the causes that trigger the disorder may help identify the illness. In the case of BD, not being able to identify any triggers may be a clue to what it is. Researchers aren’t clear on what causes it yet; however, genetics and trauma may be the main cause in some cases of the disorders.

Some people with these disorders have to go through traumatic experiences to cause these disorders, and some just inherit them from genetics.

Treatment:

Most people with bipolar disorder will need treatment their entire life to keep their condition managed. This includes medicine like mood stabilizers and medications such as antipsychotics or antidepressants.

Therapy is very helpful for people with BD to understand it and develop skills to handle it and what to do when they have a bipolar episode.

The Focus Of Borderline Personality Disorder

When determining Borderline Personality Disorder, a person’s personal relationships should be studied more closely, as they are the identifier of the condition. One of the differences between these two disorders is the role that other people play in them too.

Bipolar symptoms can flare up without any human interaction. Stress and conflict can be the trigger. Borderline personality disorder centres on how the patients interact with other people and how they see themselves.

Borderline personality disorder symptoms are usually known to be more reactive. This is because of a result of a psychologically salient, which is a feeling of frustration, rejection or a sense of abandonment.

Who is at Risk of Becoming Bipolar?

Those who are more at risk include those who have a first-degree relative who has bipolar disorder, a parent or sibling who is bipolar, having periods of high stress and anxiety from trauma and drug abuse can be the main risk factors of becoming bipolar. You are more likely to develop borderline personality disorder if you have a close relative with a similar disorder. However, other contributing factors could include things like a stressful childhood, particularly being abused or neglected.

The person’s caregiver may have also had a substance abuse problem, a person’s natural personality can contribute to having a borderline personality disorder, impulsiveness and aggression may play a main role in the development of borderline personality disorder.

Getting A Diagnosis

There are nine symptoms of Borderline personality disorder, and identifying five of them should be enough for a medical professional to give a diagnosis. Though this is not a simple task, getting a diagnosis for bipolar disorder is just as complicated, if not more. A medical professional may need to do a physical exam, psychiatric assessment, and mood charting to keep a record of your moods and sleeping patterns to determine whether a patient is bipolar or has a borderline personality disorder. BP can appear in kids and is often confused with ADHD.

There’s no biological factor to distinguish between the two disorders, but it’s important to understand what condition is present. Misdiagnosed patients have a higher risk of getting worse symptoms and complications from the disorder or mistreatment, or even worse, suicide. Researchers are continuing to find ways to diagnose each condition more easily every day.

Everything You Need To Know About Borderline Personality Disorder And Bipolar Disorder

However, there is not enough research that suggests that borderline personality disorder and bipolar are related. There are some features that are the same. There are also some marked differences between borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder.

Notes on suicide: what you should know! Suicide is a death caused by self-inflicted injury with the intention to die.

Suicide is the most common cause of death in the world. One person dies by suicide almost every 10 minutes.

The Situations That Could Lead To Suicide Attempts

• He or she becomes calm after a period of depression or anger.

You might not know what might have caused a friend or a loved one to attempt suicide. There are some characteristics to be aware of.

• Attempted suicide in the past.
• Has a mental health condition
• Has money or legal problems.
• Has violent or impulsive behaviour.
• Has alcohol or other substance abuse problems.

Most Common Suicide Warnings

If you want to know or have any sort of suspicions about your loved one wanting to take their life, here are a few things that may stand out as telltale signs!

• Loss of appetite.
• He or she chooses to be alone and avoids friends or social activities. 
• He or she loses interest in activities they enjoyed.
• Attitude and behaviour changes
• become less concerned about how they look no matter where they go. 
• Sleeping much more or barely sleeping at all.

Every suicide threat should be taken seriously. Everyone’s life matters and the mental condition that may result in an individual feeling this way should not be taken lightly!

Can Suicide Be Prevented?

Suicide can be prevented! There are a number of ways you can do this:

• Be alert to any signs of depression and other mental health conditions.
• Recognize suicide warning signs.
• Provide proper caring support.
• Ask if the person has considered hurting themselves.

People who get proper support from friends and family and who have access to mental health services are less likely to attempt or even constantly think of suicide, unlike those who have no one to talk to about their feelings or worries!

Notes on Suicide

Suicide and suicide attempts cause extreme emotional and physical impacts on everyone and everything. People who attempt suicide and survive may cause serious lasting mental health issues. On the physical side, a person may suffer from things like liver injuries (Depending on the method used).

The long-term effect on their overall health may be a serious consequence they may need to live with!

Sometimes people who attempt suicide do not succeed in their attempt. When this does happen, a person will likely be hospitalized and first treated for any injuries that occurred during the attempt. Thereafter, mental health hospitalization is likely to take place!

Suicide and suicide attempts affect the health of friends and family. When people pass from suicide, the family and friends left behind experience heartbreak, shock, anger, guilt and even develop mental health problems themselves because of it!

Notes of Suicide and Prevention!

• Research what suicide is and what causes it
• The situations and risk factors of suicide.
• Suicide warning signs.
• Can suicide be prevented?
• The impact of suicide on people’s lives

What You Should Know

If you know of someone who is showing warning signs of suicide, please, don’t be afraid to talk about depression openly. If the individual has thoughts about hurting themselves or committing suicide, ask them what’s wrong and listen clearly to what they are saying without judging them and don’t interrupt them or cut them off while they are speaking to you, everyone wants to cut in to give advice or keep asking questions, don’t or they might not open up to you again or to anyone else when they want and need help, they need all the love and support they can get at their time of need.

Your Loved Ones

Your friends and family members need to know that you care about them and are willing to listen to them talk about how they are feeling and what is making them feel that way.

Talking to a Loved One in a Depressive State!

Try your best to give them advice on how to handle the situation they are in once they have finished speaking and ask them if they want advice or not, because sometimes people just need to let go of what’s bothering them without getting any advice they just want that heavy burden lifted off their shoulders from keeping their problems and feelings bottled up inside and tell them they are not alone in their situation but if you don’t know what to say to them in their time of need, tell them that there are places they can go to with people who know how to help them with what’s going on and that there are call lines that can help them in their time of need and give them the treatments and advice that they need, remind them that they are dearly loved and cared about more than they think they are.

Depression Room – The Four Corners Of My Mind!

Many people don’t understand depression, mainly because it is too hard to imagine, but also, it could be that they don’t want to understand it, but let me explain it to you, this is what it’s like inside of a depressed person’s mind.

When you are depressed, there is a heavy feeling in your chest, it’s exactly the same feeling you feel when a loved one has passed away, but no one has passed away, only you have, and that feeling is always there. It just refuses to go away.

When you stare into a mirror and see your reflection, you just see yourself as a ghost, you’re living, but it doesn’t feel like it. You feel and look dead inside. You try endlessly to see some type of life in your eyes, but you only see dead eyes. There’s no light and no hope in them, and you start to ask yourself, how can you live for another day, week, or month? 

Then you just stop thinking about that and start asking yourself if you will even be able to survive the day you woke up to. You just feel defeated every single day.

The Horrid Depression Room – How it Feels!

It’s almost as if all the storms that could exist are happening right inside of your mind, and you can’t think straight, it’s just dark and stormy in there, you know you can’t survive it, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

Even if nothing has happened, everything just seems so wrong. Suddenly you just think no one is loving or caring anymore. Everyone and everything just irritates you so much you can’t stand it. You don’t want to work because it feels as if you can’t. It feels like you aren’t giving it your all, but you are, yet that voice inside your head keeps telling you a thousand different things to torture you.

Everything you do takes so much more effort. What you thought was difficult to do feels too overwhelming. What makes you sad is so unbearable. What feels like a bit of joy feels so pleasureless. It all just feels like you’re drowning in an ocean of pain, and you’re sinking deeper and deeper, and you can’t swim back up, almost as if you have so much weight tied to your feet it’s pulling you down into the darkness.

What Does Depression Feel Like? – Inside the Depression Room

Depression can be hard to explain or express how it feels to someone who has not experienced it. There is one misunderstanding people make about depression: to compare it to feeling sad or down in the dumps.

Yes, people with depression feel sadness, but it feels more intense than normal sadness.

Depression feels like intense pain that can’t be identified in any particular part of the body. It is more painful than any type of physical pain you can ever experience, and no one can see it. 

It’s like you’re trapped in a totally different universe. People seem so far away that you can reach or call for help, and it’s the feeling of screaming, and no one can hear you. You start to feel like no one cares about you and no one wants to help you. What does depression feels like and how does it feel to be stuck in a depression room?

• There is no pleasure or joy in life: No matter what you do or try to do, you just don’t feel pleasure in doing things, and the things you don’t bring you joy.

• Concentration and focus become harder: When you make decisions, sit in class and read or watch television, it seems overwhelming because you can’t focus or think clearly. 

• Everything in life seems hopeless: There is just no way to feel better. Depression may make a person feel like there is o way to ever feel good again.

• Self-Esteem is absent half of the time: People with depression feel like they are worthless and are a failure at everything. They dwell on everything and cannot see any positive qualities in themselves.

• Sleeping is a problem: Falling asleep and staying asleep is almost impossible for those in a depressive state! A person may wake up continuously and not be able to go back to sleep. Others sleep too much but still wake up tired, despite the extra hours of sleep.

• Energy levels are almost non-existent: Some people feel like they can’t get out of bed. They feel that they are too exhausted to do their simple daily tasks.

• Loss of appetite: People with depression feel like they don’t want to eat anything. When they force themselves to eat, they get nauseous and stop eating, and this causes them to lose a lot of weight which is unhealthy.

• Food may be used as a comfort or coping mechanism: some people with depression don’t want to eat, others overeat and crave unhealthy foods to comfort them. This can lead to unhealthy weight gain.

• Aches and pains: Some people experience headaches, nausea, body aches, and other pains with depression. 

Many people seem to believe that being depressed is a choice or that they need to have a positive attitude. Friends and family get frustrated and don’t understand why a person can’t snap out of their depressive state. They love to tell the person who is depressed that they have nothing to be depressed about.

What it Means!

Depression is an actual mental illness. People who have depression cannot simply decide one morning when they wake up that they will stop being depressed. 

Unlike normal sadness or worry, depression feels like it’s eating you alive, and you feel hopeless.

If you know of anyone with depression, speak to them and comfort them as best as you can because this is exactly how someone with depression feels, and this is what goes on inside their mind. Depression isn’t just a phase. It is an illness. A lot of things can cause depression, so don’t be quick to judge and push your friends and family with depression to one side. Depression is the darkest illness to exist on this planet.

Will A Mental Health Academy Aid In My Well-Being? Having good mental health and living well is extremely important to every single one of us, whether we are mentally ill or just struggling with everyday emotions.

What is Mental HealthMental health is related to the social and emotional well-being of individuals.

The culture related to mental health relates to:

• Enjoyment of everyday life.
• Having the ability to cope and get back to reality from stress and sadness.
• Being able to set and complete daily goals.
• Build and maintain relationships with others daily.

Tips for mental health and well-being!

It is so easy for us to take our mental health for granted, to prioritize other things. In our minds, we set tasks for ourselves, and when the time comes to do them, we set them aside, thinking it is too hard to do at the moment. But it’s not. There are things everyone can do, even if it’s at their own steady pace. 

Use the following tips to get started on your journey!

Sleep and Rest!

Sleep will affect your physical and mental health, but it is the first thing we give away when we get too busy or stressed.

• Take time out for things you enjoy. Balance is very important. Taking time out of your schedule for things you enjoy will make a difference in how you think and feel.
• Be active and eat well. Our physical and mental health are linked together, so adding exercise and nutritious food to your everyday diet will make you feel better.
•  Connect with others. Our connection with others is what builds us as people and keeps us going.
• Learn to manage stress. If you have trouble winding down or handling your thoughts, you may find relaxation, or writing what you are feeling down can be helpful.
• Get involved. Being part of a group with your common interests provides a feeling of belonging, so find out about sports, music, or community groups in your local area.
• Build confidence. Learning new things improves your mental fitness, and taking on a new challenge every day or every other day can build confidence and give you a sense of achievement.
• Be comfortable in your own skin. Everyone is unique in their own way. Know who you are, and do what makes you happy no matter what.
• Set realistic goals and deal with these tasks one at a time. It is good to be specific when you set a goal to help keep you on track.
• Ask for help should you need it. Everyone needs support. Talk to a close friend, a family member, or one of the many services available can make all the difference.

Why Mental Health And Well-Being Should Be Promoted In a Mental Health Academy 

For some people, mental health issues emerge when they are young, half of all mental disorders will rear by the time people are 14 years old and the other half its head by 25 years old, this is the same period when most people are busy educating themselves, and that is when people have the most stress and anxiety from studying and getting up to no time for themselves because they are too busy creating a future for themselves some make time for themselves and some don’t because they have to carry the weight of their families being disappointed in them if they don’t do a good job in university, and that makes a lot of people feel worthless and carry stress on their shoulders!

As well as increasing a person’s opportunity and decisions in life, promoting mental health and well-being as a secondary role in education helps students:

• Succeed better in their education journey.
• Build strength against difficult situations.
• Develop protective factors for mental health.
• Provide them with confidence to seek help early.

Aiming To Raise Quality And Standards Across The Entire School

This involves everyone in a mental health academy, teachers, staff, and parents to place a safe and inclusive learning culture and environment, including:

• Providing social and emotional skill programs.
• Providing prompt support for those with additional needs.
• Involving students and families in decision-making. 

Strength Building For Students

Strength is the ability to cope and thrive in the face of negative events or challenges. However, this is a skill that can be developed!

• Positive social connections.
• Safe Environments.
• Life skills such as positive coping and problem-solving skills.
• Pro-social values.
• Positive self-respect.
• A sense of purpose and responsibility.

Health and Physical Education Learning Area

This focuses on students enhancing their own and other people’s health, safety, well-being, and physical activity participation in varied and changing contexts. This specific curriculum focuses on helping students develop the understanding and skills required to make safe choices that will enhance their own and other people’s health and well-being.

Personal and Social Capability

This involves students:

• Learning to recognize and regulate emotions.
• Develop compassion for others and understand relationships better.
• Establish positive relationships.
• Work effectively in teams!

A Mental Health Academy

Your mental health is considered equally as important as your physical health.

You often can’t see it with your eyes. Mental illness problems can cause serious damage to a person’s well-being, mentally and physically! For us to work on mental health issue prevention, we need to raise awareness about these problems. A mental health academy is definitely one of the main places where mental health awareness needs to be spread.

Mental health awareness in schools is enormous. Let’s take a detailed look at why we need schools to spread awareness about mental health.

Closing the Gap

Schools are supposed to help our younger generation prepare for the world that awaits at the end of their schooling days and all the obstacles they will run into.

Most schools of today teach:

• Physical health.
• Health education.
• Nutrition.
• Sex education.

However, there’s a massive hole when it comes to mental health. Without being properly educated students won’t know how to:

• Recognize the problem that they’re experiencing.
• Opening up about it.
• Look for help when it gets bad.
• Help other people with similar or other mental health problems.

This hole needs to be closed soon, and the children need to have a chance of dealing with their mental health problems just like they’ll deal with any other problem they have.

Suicide & Mental Illnesses

Suicide is and has always been one of the leading causes of death among the ages of ages 10-25 worldwide. Raising awareness of suicide will immediately lower the rates of such tragic event happening!

Talking and learning about mental health illnesses will leave a positive impact on the students struggling:

• They will learn about therapy and how to treat their problem correctly.
• They will be more ready to talk about it than bottle it in.
• They will acknowledge that they have a problem.

Everything in the statements above will hopefully lower the suicide rate and offer young people a solution other than ending their life.

Early Intervention

Like any other disease or health problem, early interventions are just as important in mental health.

Teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and everyone else has to learn about it.

• Early detection of mental illness or suicidal tendencies!
• Spotting the meaningful changes in someone’s everyday behavior
• Act upon any signs of mental illness promptly!
• Social Media Influence

 We all love using social media to get information, find entertainment, and connect with our friends and celebrities. There is a rather ugly side to it that not many people are not actually talking about.

The truth is, social media does have consequences and can leave extremely deep scars in the minds of the users who use it on an everyday basis, especially the younger generation of today.

Watching rich, famous, and successful people on social media can cause mental health problems in young children, causing:

• Low self-esteem.
• Self Perception.
• Depression.
• Anxiety.

Since social media is on the rise each year, with nearly 3.5 billion + active users worldwide, the effect it has on the younger generation around our schools is mind-blowing.

This is a threat. Schools will need to raise the bar in mental health awareness and ensure their students are learning about:

• Self-Love.
• How they should value themselves.
• Loving one another.
• Not judging one another.
• Talking About their insecurities.

This would be an advantage for the proper development of students and prevent them from feeling demoralized or depressed.

Eliminating the Cause

It’s important to learn and be educated about the negative effects of mental health issues and how to treat them. It’s important to learn about the main causes as well.

Learning about the causes of stress, depression, and anxiety is important, and school can be a a negative or positive trigger for most students experiencing mental health issues.

Students feel stressed out due to:

• School pressure.
• Peer pressure
• Bullying at school
• Strict teachers
• Homework Overload
• The pressure of having high grades.

If everyone in schools knew what stressed out the students the most, they would find a way to eliminate these stress factors and create a calmer atmosphere at school for the students.

This will help the children find their peace and balance and get rid of the feeling of anxiety, and stress, which could, later on, develop into even more severe mental health issues.

Mental Health And Awareness and a Mental Health Academy 

It’s very important to raise mental health awareness in schools and this may be why a mental health academy may help since younger people are affected daily by their mental health issues. They desperately need a system that they can rely on and some source of information to get them through the process of dealing with their inner issues on a daily basis. Schools need to make changes and get as many people as possible to work on raising mental health awareness.