Mental health has become a much bigger part of the conversation nowadays. As the stigma has been broken down, people are getting encouraged more frequently to practice self-care how they can and to seek treatment or at least speak out when they need help. However, stigmas persist, with one of the major ones being that we don’t often talk about the causes of mental and emotional health problems. Here, we’re going to address some of them.
Trauma
It might often be depicted as the most common cause of mental health issues in media, but the truth is that trauma is common and can have long-lasting impacts on your emotional health. This can include abuse or neglect, as a child or adult, bereavement, experiences of violence, bullying, and so on.
Disadvantage
Deprivation and social or economic disadvantage can be tremendous causal factors of depression, stress, and anxiety. If you have been in poverty or in debt for a long-time, this stress can build up. Long-term health conditions and disabilities can lead to problems finding work. As such, aside from looking to address your emotional health, you might also want to look to aids like the Federal Rescue Plan that can help to improve your situation, even in small ways that relieve some of the stress.
Periods of extreme stress
The two cases above can, of course, be examples of this. However, even seemingly mundane factors can lead to periods of extreme stress. This can include stress in the workplace, interpersonal relationship problems, especially in the family. Furthermore, being a long-term carer for someone you love is well known for its risk of coming with a higher chance of chronic stress or anxiety issues.
Substance abuse
Mood-altering substances and mental health issues have a cyclical relationship. Some people turn to alcohol or drugs as a means of self-medicating, but a dependent relationship with these substances can lead to the exacerbation of those same problems. To that end, services like Sunshine Behavioral Health can offer a dual treatment approach. As well as treating the addiction, treating the emotional and mental health issues at the root of them can often help.
Physical causes
The medical side of mental health treatment tends to focus more on what chemical processes are happening in the head. Chemical imbalances in the brain, such as uneven levels of serotonin, dopamine, and cortisol, can cause major changes in mood. However, how brain chemistry and mental health are linked is, to a large degree, unknown.
Hereditary issues
Mental health issues do run in the family, to some degree. For instance, someone who has a parent with schizophrenia is more likely to have it themselves. However, it’s unknown how much of this is a genetic predisposition and how much of this is due to picking up coping and behavioral habits from those were are raised by. As such, it hasn’t been definitively proven that there are any genes that are a direct cause of mental health problems.
If you feel like you have been having trouble coping lately and any of the issues above apply to you, you may want to seek help.
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