ADHD Clinic in Hebbal, Bangalore

What Is Mental Health?

Mental health relates to your emotional and psychological well-being, which is crucial for leading a happy and healthy life. It enables you to show resilience and manage challenges effectively. Various factors, such as life events and genetics, can influence your mental health.

Factors Affecting Mental Health

• Socioeconomic Pressure - Having limited financial means or belonging to a marginalised ethnic group can increase the risk of mental health disorders as a result of biases in healthcare. Several mental health stem from socioeconomic causes including poverty and living on the outskirts of a large city.

• Childhood Adversity - Childhood traumas such as child abuse, parental loss, parental separation, and parental illness affect a growing child’s mental and physical health. These experiences also make people vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

• Biological Factors - A person’s family history can increase the likelihood of mental health conditions, as specific genes and gene variants put a person at higher risk. However, having a gene associated with a mental health disorder does not guarantee that a condition will develop. 

• Stress - Chronic stress and mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety may develop due to cancer, diabetes, chronic pain and other underlying physical health problems.

Early signs of Mental Health Issues

No physical test or scan reliably indicates whether a person has developed a mental health condition. However, people should look out for the following as possible signs:

• Withdrawing from friends, family, and colleagues
• Avoiding activities, they would usually enjoy
• Sleeping too much or too little
• Eating too much or too little
• Feeling hopeless
• Having consistently low energy
• Using mood-altering substances, including alcohol and nicotine, more frequently
• Displaying negative emotions
• being confused
• Being unable to complete daily tasks, such as getting to work or cooking a meal
• Thinking of causing physical harm to themselves or others
• Hallucinations

Psychiatric Treatment Options

A counsellor or therapist is a professional trained to address various mental health conditions, including:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Bipolar disorder
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Personality disorders
• Eating disorders
• Substance use disorders

Psychotherapies

Psychotherapy can be conducted as the sole treatment for mental health conditions or can be accompanied by psychiatric medications. Common psychotherapies include:

• Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Therapies: Psychoanalysis, focuses on uncovering and examining past events or patterns influencing current behaviours. 

• Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Likely the most widely used and validated form of psychotherapy today, CBT is applied in depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and many other conditions. It teaches patients ways of noticing and curbing distressing thought patterns and offers skills for regaining control in stressful experiences. 

• Interpersonal Therapy: Here, therapist and patient collaborate to explore diagnoses in the context of life experiences by examining life events, patients identify patterns and significant relationships. Strengthening relationships and building support systems are crucial, particularly for mood disorders like depression.

• Mentalisation Therapy: This therapy enhances awareness of emotions and how they connect to actions, which is beneficial for borderline personality disorder. It focuses on understanding one's thoughts and emotions to improve interpersonal skills.

• Couple Therapy: Addresses family dynamics and issues affecting the entire unit. It encourages open communication, understanding, and creating action plans to resolve issues, aiding in managing various challenges like behavioural health issues or major life changes.

• Group Therapy: Conducted by one or two therapists with up to 15 participants, group therapy fosters support and skill-building. It's effective for education, skill development, and emotional support, offering a cost-effective treatment option.

• Child Therapy: This form of therapy majorly involves indulging children in various game-based activites to enhance communication and social skills, addressing emotional concerns indirectly. Therapists observe and engage with children to improve social and emotional development.

• EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) helps heal trauma through memory processing, incorporating cognitive-behavioral therapy principles. It aids in creating new associations with traumatic memories to reduce distress and improve functioning.

• Behaviour Therapy: Focuses on observable behaviour changes and reinforcement strategies. Therapists collaborate with patients to replace negative behaviours with positive ones, which is often effective in managing anxiety, phobias, and behavioural issues.

• Gestalt Therapy: Focuses on present experiences rather than past events, promoting awareness and personal responsibility. Therapists help patients accept and understand current emotions and behaviours to improve self-perception.

• Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT): Targets emotional awareness and management in the present moment. It helps individuals identify and transform emotional issues, which is beneficial for depression and trauma recovery.

Medications 

Psychiatric medications are prescribed to manage mental health conditions and their symptoms effectively. They can enhance the effectiveness of other therapies.

Types of psychiatric medications include:

• Antidepressants: These medications, often combined with psychological therapies, address symptoms of conditions like depression, anxiety, phobias, and certain eating disorders.

• Antipsychotics: Primarily used to manage psychosis symptoms in conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They may also be prescribed for severe symptoms of depression or anxiety.

• Mood Stabilisers: Effective for individuals with bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression). They help prevent major depressive episodes and manage manic or elevated mood phases.

Biological Therapies

Sometimes, directly modifying how nerve signals are transmitted in specific brain areas or circuits that govern particular functions may be essential to alleviate symptoms. Advances in technology allow for precise targeting of nerve nodes, making treatments like permanent placement of small electrodes or repetitive use of magnets increasingly common for various disorders, especially those resistant to other treatments.

• Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): ECT has traditionally been a last-resort treatment for severe depression that does not respond to other therapies. Administered under general anaesthesia, ECT applies electrical currents to induce seizures aimed at resetting neural transmission in the brain. 

• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): TMS offers a non-invasive, repetitive treatment for depression and anxiety. Using precision-placed magnets over specific brain areas linked to these disorders, TMS activates nerve cells while patients remain awake and alert during sessions.

• Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS):  VNS stimulation of the vagus nerve is a means of regulating the excitability of nerve cells without inducing seizures. Since depression is associated with the over-activity of certain brain circuits, VNS is also sometimes used to relieve unrelenting depression. A small mechanical device delivering intermittent electrical impulses to the vagus nerve is implanted inside the chest cavity or noninvasively affixed to the skin.

There are other nonmechanical ways of stimulating the vagus nerve—such as deep breathing techniques—and they are increasingly used to subdue states of anxiety and unease. Most versions of cognitive behavioural therapy teach calming techniques as an important stress-reduction skill.