The impact of depression and anxiety on our lives
Mental health is an important part of your health
For the longest time, depression and anxiety were considered by most to be something to “push through” or ignore. Asking for help or seeking psychiatric care used to be considered by many to be a sign of weakness. I want to take some time to explain why, in some ways, mental health is one of the most important parts of our health journey. The best way I can explain this is with the following: everything that we see and feel in this world is because it is processed in our minds. As an example, when you pour cold water on your hands, the millions of nerves we have under our skin transmit that sensation to our brain, which then processes those signals and tells you that what you just felt was cold water. That is the reason that patients who have spinal cord injuries cannot feels anything or move their arms or legs depending on the level of that injury, as the connection between our body and our mind is severed. So, when our brain is unhealthy, everything becomes unhealthy. Depression and anxiety are chemical imbalances in our brain.
Let’s start by looking a little closer at depression. Depression can cause people to feel things are way heavier than they otherwise would be and cloud our judgement. Some of the symptoms of depression include sleeping too much or too little, eating too much or too little, feelings of worthlessness, thoughts of suicide, isolation or lack of interest in things that you used to love to do and fatigue to name a few. People can start to have aches and pains that they wouldn’t otherwise have or experience symptoms that they wouldn’t otherwise have. As we get older, rates of depression tend to go up for a number of reasons, including loss of loved ones, independence and purpose.
Anxiety is a condition where a person tends to worry excessively. When bad enough, our bodies can constantly release a low level of our “fight or flight” hormones such as adrenaline. Patients tend to worry excessively about otherwise minor issues. You can have a hard time falling asleep due to racing thoughts and be irritable or quick to anger. When the anxiety is severe enough, patients can have physical manifestations such as panic attacks and social anxiety. In some cases, patients can have neurologic manifestations, such as feeling like you can’t move half your body or having seizure-like or even stroke-like symptoms. Patients can experience pain due to anxiety and have sexual side effects as well. One well know condition commonly know as heartbreak syndrome (Takatsubo cardiomyopathy is the medical term) is a condition where sudden severe anxiety or stress or depression (such as the loss of a loved one) can lead to a sudden and severe weakening of the heart, so we know that high levels of stress have actual physical consequences on our body.
The good news is that both conditions are treatable. The best way to treat these symptoms is with therapy with a licensed counselor who will have several tools to teach you so you can control your symptoms. However, learning to reprogram your thoughts and behaviors can take some time and it may be helpful to start on an anti-depressant in the meantime. The guidelines recommend staying on an antidepressant for 6 months before slowly weaning them off if a patient has been stable and improving on them. Of course, every medication can have potential side effects so talk to your doctor or psychiatrist to come up with the best option for you. If you are suffering from these issues, don’t suffer in silence. I have personal and professional experience with this so feel free to call if you ever need to explore this further.
