Important mental health questions answered by an expert UAE psychiatrist
While mental health continues to be a growing topic of conversation, there are still many questions surrounding mental health issues.
As yesterday marked World Mental Health Day, Emirates Woman consulted specialist psychiatrist Dr Laila Mahmoud from Medcare Hospitals & Medical Centres to answer some extremely important question surrounding mental health in the UAE and beyond.
From helping your own mental health, to helping those close to you – here’s some key questions you need to answers to.
World Mental Health Day is, of course, an important day to mark mental health awareness, but how can we ensure this continues all year round?
Mental health is as important as physical health. We need both a healthy body and mind to achieve a peaceful, stable life.
Around one billion people around the world suffer from mental illness, with one person every second committing suicide. Yet, relatively few people around the world have access to quality mental health services.
According to studies conducted by The National Institute of Mental Health statistics, a third of people suffering from mental illness never consulted a psychiatrist, and never were on psychiatric treatment, whether medication or psychotherapy or both.
Stigma, discrimination, punitive legislation and human rights abuses are boundaries in some countries that stop them from delivering proper mental health services. It is more important today, than ever, to draw peoples’ attention toward the need for better and more easily accessible treatment facilities. The pandemic has caused a hike in the numbers of patients seeking psychiatric help, and awareness drives like Mental Health Day will help fight the stigma around seeking help.
Where can I get help for my mental health in the UAE?
The UAE is constantly working towards making health services easily accessible to its residents, and this is also true with mental health facilities. There are a lot of experts in the UAE that deliver high-quality professional treatment in line with the latest guidelines advised by the World Health Organisation, whether it is through the government hospitals or within the private sector.
What signs should you look for when you should go and see someone about your mental health?
Look for changes in:
Mood: Are you anxious, sad, irritable?
Thinking: Are your thoughts not clear? Are you feeling overwhelmed? Could you be overthinking? Are you having obsessive thoughts or actions? Do these ideas interfere with my daily activities? Are my thoughts making it difficult for me to deal with others? Is there a lack of thoughts or sense of dissociation?
Appetite: Have I been eating more or less than usual?
Sleep: Am I sleeping for longer or fewer hours? Is this change having a negative impact on my daily life?
Activities: Do I feel a loss of interest in life and any pleasurable activities? Do I have death wishes or fear death and illness?
Can you talk us through mental health issues?
Anxiety, in simple words, is the failure of a person to cope with stress, leading to tunnel vision, feeling overwhelmed and overly anxious. These are often combined with somatic complaints like headaches, dizziness, tremors, increased heart rate, shortness of breath, feeling tightness in the chest, and sense of impending death. Someone suffering from anxiety may not experience all of these symptoms, but is likely to feel a combination of a few of them.
What is the best way to check on someone else’s mental health?
The first step we take as psychiatrists is to talk to the patient. This is followed by a mental state examination for assessment, evaluation and diagnosis. Some laboratory tests may be needed to exclude organic causes before establishing a proper diagnosis.
Given the pandemic, it’s more important than ever to check on people. Would you agree?
Yes, social support is a main factor in the treatment plan of any mental disorder. It speeds up the rate of improvement, increases the adherence to treatment, and helps the patient to return back to normal life. Research has found that the presence of good social support delays the onset of illness, postpones the progression and fastens the response to treatment, and helps in maintaining and adherence of the treatment for long periods, therefore preventing relapse.
What causes depression?
Depression is bio-socio-environmental, which simply means there are multiple factors:
Biological: caused by neurotransmitter imbalance
Social: caused by loneliness, divorce, being widowed, lack of support from family or friends
Environmental: caused by high emotional expression families, high critical and stressful environment, unhealthy lifestyle, or stress of immigration and loneliness
What causes anxiety?
Anxiety is a neurotransmitter imbalance of serotonin that leads to increase in stress-induced hormones (cortisol and adrenaline). This leads to failure of the capacity of the person to deal with stress and tension. The patient usually experiences an anxious mood, overthinking, feeling overwhelmed, and somatic complaints like poor appetite and sleep disturbances.
How can I speak to and help someone with a mental health problem like depression or anxiety?
First: Let them acknowledge their feeling, and allow them the time and space to express it.
Second: Understand that it is an illness that results from a chemical imbalance. It is the same as iron deficiency anaemia, so it is not because they have a weak personality or poor faith in the good. They will recover soon as the chemical imbalance is corrected.
Third: Everything is based on your perception. Look at the illness intellectually, not emotionally, so as not to be drained in an emotional trap of failure and disappointment. Help people understand that it just an illness to be treated. Take the medicine as prescribed and give it time. Psychotherapy can help as well.
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