We all probably know a person who has one mental illness or another, maybe they’ve been diagnosed, maybe they haven’t been. And we’ve all probably experienced the need to help, so we talk, which helps often as well but sometimes it doesn’t and we’re all in this helpless state where we do not know what to do. Here’s some of the most common occurring mental illnesses: depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, ADHD, schizophrenia, etc.
One of the best and common way of helping is talking to affected person and comforting them. But it doesn’t necessarily work all the time. With depression, you often feel crippled, the smallest tasks require too much effort. Self loathing is always around the corner and lying in your bed for days doesn’t seem so mundane. Sometimes, for a person suffering depression, you can do some tasks for them, say laundry, ironing the clothes, maybe making a good meal. Often they need someone to give them that little mental push, be that. It often helps to get them to go on a walk with you. Please remember: Do not tell them that it’s all in their head or that if they know the trigger, they should quickly get over it, or tell them about how someone has it worse. Depression comes with an insane amount of self-loathing, please don’t amplify it. This is the case with all mental illnesses. Telling someone to snap out of it or telling them they’re ungrateful of what they have will only have an adverse effect.
Anxiety is characterised with a lot of instances where the person feels chaotic. Their minds are screaming chaos. Comforting through conversation is good. A hug is even better. About 30 seconds of hugging releases oxytocin and hugging in general lowers stress causing hormones, having a positive impact on blood pressure and heart rate. Please be patient. People with anxiety tend to repeat their fears again and again, their fear tends to try to come at them through various angles.
With bipolar disorder, sometimes it may be difficult to see a change coming for both the affected person and yourself. Here’s a few ways you can tell (they may not work for everyone): 1) sleeping less 2) talking fast and a lot 3) Taking chances, which may involve reckless decisions including various aspects, such as life and money.
For someone with ADHD, you can help with some of the same ways as previous mentioned illnesses, besides that you can point out their strengths, be a body double and offer help. Lastly with schizophrenia, patience is key. Besides that, you can help make sure that they are taking their medication and intervene when necessary.
In general, patience, reassurance, helping in daily tasks, encouragement, no judgement, research and stress relief is what all of these mainly require. Try to be as informed as you can about their mental illness and offer as much help as possible. Encourage them to seek therapy, help them maintain their social skills.
And during all of this, please do not forget yourself. It’s a hurtful experience as well to see someone you care about in pain and it can take a toll on you as well. Do go for counselling at some point even if you feel good. In group therapy, with people going through similar struggles, you can all share various methods of helping each other and the people who have mental illnesses.
Thank you for sharing that. Mental healtth problems can be very difficult for the person who has it and the people surrounding him (which includes parents, siblings, friends and significant others). I have a friend who has PTSD and he lived so far away from me that the only time I get to talk to him before was dependent on how he feels that day. So there can be a week or two of no communication for he can’t focus, and there will be days he talks non stop. I guess the bottomline is to be kind and nice to people who have these.
Great thread Fatima. Keep it up.