Mental illness can be confusing for you and your loved ones. Find answers to common question about mental health, treatment tools, and general wellness information.
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Disorder Overviews
Mental illnesses can be difficult to handle. Treatment and recovery requires time, effort, patience, and a lot of understanding and support. Unfortunately, those who suffer from mental illnesses often have to deal with much more than just their illness-- they also often suffer from the effects of stigmas, negative representations or stereotypes that unfairly label people with mental illness.
Suicide is a complex issue and is different in every case. There is no one cause, but there are risk factors that may contribute to thoughts of suicide.
Eating disorders are serious illnesses that cause “extreme emotions, attitudes, and behaviors surrounding weight and food issues”. Contrary to what some believe, eating disorders are not simply “phases“, and can seriously impair a person physically and mentally. There are three main types of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder.
In many situations, anxiety is a normal, healthy feeling that can actually be helpful. It makes us alert, aware, and provides motivation. Uncontrollable anxiety, however, is a serious and often debilitating disorder that can cause sufferers to feel overly anxious for no apparent reason. Anxiety disorders are different from regular feelings of anxiety and nervousness that are normally felt in anticipation of big or important events.
Depression is a serious condition that is different from ordinary feelings of sadness. While it is normal for people to feel down or unhappy from time to time, clinical depression is a persistent state of unhappiness, and can seriously disrupt how a person feels, thinks, or behaves. Many people who suffer from depression have difficulty functioning on a day-to-day basis; they can feel overwhelmed or consumed by their thoughts, and often don’t find pleasure in activities or hobbies they used to enjoy.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), sometimes referred to attention deficit disorder (ADD), is a condition that is characterized by problems paying attention, poor impulse control, restlessness, and hyperactivity.
Mental health and nutrition are two fields that are very much related, and yet not many people know exactly how much. Studies have shown that mental health can be affected by a number of nutritional deficiencies, or even an unhealthy diet in general. Luckily, there are several ways you can improve your nutrition and mental wellness at the same time.
When I moved to Chicago for school, my other off-campus friends told me that the first couple of weeks of commuting are exciting, an adventure, and you can’t get enough of it. But then, they said, once you’re settled in and used to the buses, the trains, and the long walks down the streets where buses don’t run, you become quickly disenchanted. It happened more quickly than I expected it to. After just a couple days of adjusting to my new semester’s class schedule, I started closing my eyes to make myself feel like I was getting just a little more rest because the coffee or tea or whatever form of caffeine I was using hadn’t kicked in yet. I would stare out the window and wonder why the traffic had to be so heavy, why everyone had to pile on the bus at one stop and get off at several others.
I started, in short, to think of my commute as a waste of time. I don’t like wasting time. As a student, I have plenty of things I need to get done during any given week. Sitting down to relax and recover from the stress load of the week is one of those things.
So how can a commute, typically stressful in itself, help us to get more than heap after heap of stress out of our work week?
Using that time for meditation is one possibility. Meditation as a relaxation technique is gaining popularity in research studies. Yale University Researchers have explored the relationship between sleep and meditation, in an article published by Psychology Today. Researchers found that people who meditate on a regular basis can more easily tune out the parts of the brain associated with anxiety and other mental health issues. Meditating can help lead to a greater mental alertness and clarity of thought.
The type of meditation ideal for fifteen to twenty minute intervals is called transcendental meditation. It relaxes the mind and body by releasing stress and tiredness, and can be practiced simply by sitting comfortably with eyes closed.
Zen meditation may take more time than transcendental meditation, but if practiced it includes closing the mind to any thoughts or images that might occur to it in order to escape from the constant talk of one’s mind.
Taoist meditation is typically seen as a more practical meditative form. Its purpose is to focus a person’s flow of breath by expanding and contracting the abdomen. Through this, anybody practicing this type of meditation will gain a focused attention that may be applied to situations in everyday life. This is the type of meditation that encourages focusing on the positive when a negative situation arises.
Mindfulness meditation, in contrast, is involved with being alert of everything that’s going on in the present situation, forcing our bodies to focus on what we can’t change. It’s all about being aware of things you don’t have any control over.
These are only a couple of the many different varieties of meditation, though nearly all of them can be utilized for the purposes of relaxation or increased well-being, both mentally and physically. The Maharishi Foundation outlines specific meditation health benefits including reduced high blood pressure, increased productivity, and decreased anxiety among practitioners of transcendental meditation. The most important thing when deciding which type of meditation to practice is deciding what works with your schedule and what you need to get out of it, because, like a lot of other things, what you get out of it is what you put into it.
