You’d be surprised at how much Mental health plays a part in our daily lives. It's very difficult to admit that you suffer from some kind of mental disorder. Even just standing in front of a mirror, and mouthing the words to yourself that you have a mental disorder is tough to do. It's almost like an evolutionary defence mechanism to not admit that in some ways you are not in touch with reality. This could be because we don’t want to sound weak, so we brush off any doubts and convince ourselves that we’re normal. The human mind is perhaps the most beautiful and intricate thing known in existence. Don’t you think such a multifaceted, multilayered being would have some or any defects? In fact, the statistics don’t lie and show that mental disorders are experienced in one form or another and at one time or another during our lives. It's now common knowledge that 1 in 4 British people say they have suffered from a mental disorder each year. The most common are depression and anxiety, but there are other disorders that sometimes, unfortunately, fly under the radar.
Negative body image
In today’s world of non-stop media action, there’s always some new content to consume. The little computers in our pockets known as smartphones give us access to the entire world in just a couple of swipes and taps of the touchscreen. Music videos with artists and stars dressed in a sexualised fashion, movies with actors in peak physical condition and models with trimmed figures all put immense pressure on girls and boys. Girls especially are more likely to suffer from body dysmorphic disorder. This is a mental health condition where an individual worries about their body in terms of aesthetic appeal. They overanalyse and stress about their flaws, features, proportions and generally their sexual market value.
Symptoms of BDD are usually pretty openly recognised if you take the average scope of that person. They may be thinner and below their average weight. You can tell this by their bones protruding from their face and their joints. If someone is obsessively talking about their features and how they look, it's a clear sign that their worries are more than just run of the mill body image concerns. If they spend a lot of time in the mirror studying themselves. Comparing their body to someone who they admire is another sign of not being comfortable in their own skin. This constant picking at themselves and a dislike for how they look leads to depression and suicidal thoughts. A feeling of disgust in themselves can come over them which can also lead them to self-harm.
The treatment to BDD is to undergo severe therapy and counselling. Cognitive behaviour therapy and an antidepressant medication called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor can be administered and prescribed to the individual. If you know someone that is suffering from BDD, it's best to inform someone like their parents, friends, teachers and or employers. They may not ask for help by themselves, but an intervention might save them from themselves.
It has to be precise
Almost everyone in your life and yourself have at one time or another exhibited behaviour of OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder is a very fascinating mental disorder for those interested in the field of mental health. However, for those suffering from OCD, every little thing in their life is a chore and an endlessly exhausting mental mission. The simple things in life are made incredibly complex by the need to have something or make something precise. This disorder can affect both genders and pretty much all age groups. The most common time it ascends as a dominant part of one’s personality is during and after puberty.
The symptoms of OCD are quite openly visible even if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be looking at. This is because the mental disorder requires the individual to act on their obsessive thoughts. This can be triggered by an unwanted or unpleasant thought, image, or an urge to do something over and over in their mind. The physical manifestation of these thoughts is to act out compulsive, repetitive action. For example, someone inadvertently taps or hits the tip of their feet or shoe on the floor, can feel as if their body is uneven, so they tap or hit their other foot or shoe the same amount of times on the same angle. Another example is of an OCD act is to excessively check that light switches are off. Overly make sure that the light in rooms you’re leaving is off can result in switching the lights on and off several times before you are happy to leave the room knowing they’re off.
The first step to freedom from this disorder is to go see your doctor. They will refer you to a psychological therapy service that is nearest to you or alternatively you could see a psychotherapist online via video such as the DrJulian service. It's not uncommon to be put onto antidepressant medication, so the effects of your condition to not allow your mind to become riddled with melancholy thoughts. The psychologist will go through with you a series of questions and meeting to find the root cause of the OCD condition you have. It's going to require patient and mental toughness to break through and eventually stop your compulsive behaviour, but everyone is curable. That’s the thing about OCD, you’re conscious of what you’re doing and you only need to climb over that mental wall you have created to stop your disorder.
A tired soul
Imagine waking up just as tired as you were when you went to sleep? It seems impossible, but that’s whatsleep deprivation feels like. Just getting two or three hours of Sleep a night isn’t just not enough, but it's physically and mentally harmful to your health. Our bodies and minds need to recharge and heal so that we can perform optimally during the day. The longer we go without a good night's sleep, the more our cognitive abilities depreciate. Even the simplest task can become a challenge when we are sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation is a targeted health warning to drivers on the road as those who have been away for more than 18 hours exhibit the same reaction times to hazards in the road, as drivers who are beyond the drink drive limit. By this stretch of the imagination can you imagine how well you would function at your job or at school while being awake for more than 20 hours?
One of the causes of sleep deprivation is the blockage of airways. Having a swollen sinus passage can lead you to become a mouth-breather. If the back of your mouth collapses and your tongue falls little backward, this can cause you to actually stop breathing temporarily. Sleep apnea is a common cause of sleep deprivation as your body is not getting the oxygen levels it's needs during sleeping hours. So instead of feeling rejuvenated, you actually feel no better than when you went to bed last night.
Constantly waking up in the middle of the night because ironically, your snoring woke you up, is no picnic. Thanks to your irregular sleep pattern, throughout the day you’ll be operating at such a lower level to everybody else. Depression will take over since you feel trapped. Anytime you want to go to sleep and get the rest you need, the cycle repeats itself, and you’re lucky if you can manage a couple of hours of REM sleep.
Snoring is no laughing matter, especially when you keep waking yourself up because of the noise you create. Stop Snoring Now! is a fantastic website where you can learn about the different kinds of snoring and the causes to occurrences. On the blog, you’ll find product reviews of different kinds of devices that help to get rid of snoring. There are three kinds of snoring that can be clearly identified so there’s no product that will fix all three. But since you are highly likely to only be suffering from two out of the three kinds of snoring, you can see what products would best suit your condition. There’s a lot of life advice regarding snoring such as how to help children who also have snoring issues.
You can go to your doctor to get yourself referred to a sleep specialist clinic. However, they will more than likely just offer you snoring products to help control your airways. They may offer you some therapeutic and or exercise services to help your muscle walls in your windpipe strengthen but overall the anti-snoring devices will be the end result.
Day to day we walk around hundreds and hundreds of people. Almost every single person seems normal, but underneath the well-groomed image, they quite possibly suffer from a mental health condition. Body image disorders can lead to other harmful abnormal behaviors such as not eating properly and physical self-harm. Other such conditions such as OCD may seem harmless at first, but they take a toll on the mind of the individual that cannot seem to shake it off. Who would have thought that sleeping can actually keep you awake. It certainly can if you’re a loud snorer who wakes up to the sound of his or her own airway reverberations.
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