Anxiety and Depression are debilitating mood disorders than can impact negatively on all aspects of what we consider to be “normal” life. We all experience ups and downs and mood changes to varying degrees, but when your mood starts to impact on your quality of life, general happiness, or your ability to maintain normal family and personal relationships or a normal working experience and quality of work – at that point something has tipped over into an issue that needs to be addressed directly. They are often inter-related, and many people have symptoms of both at the same time.
Some warning signs are:
- Persistent sleep disturbance
- Persistent low energy, fatigue and demotivation
- Loss of pleasure in things you would normally enjoy
- Constant circular thoughts with no resolution
- Feeling anxious even about small things like seeing friends or going out shopping
- Any suicidal thoughts/fantasies, or feeling that your family & friends would be better off without you
- Panic Attacks with chest pain like a heart attack, or feeling like you are unable to breathe
- Feeling like you no longer have control of your own life
- Post-Natal Depression, fear that you might hurt your children
I believe that medication should only be used as a tool to manage a crisis situation, and I work very closely with a clinical psychologist to try ensure that you are able to understand what might have led to your current situation, but much more importantly to give you the mental tools to manage and guide yourself out of it, which is far more powerful than having to rely on medication.
Unfortunately in our modern era rates of depression and anxiety are very high worldwide, on average 1 in 8-10 people will experience an episode bad enough to present to their doctor in their lifetime. What that means is that you are certainly not alone, even though you might be thinking you are the only person in the world feeling like this.
Help is available, the bravest (& hardest) thing you can do is ask for it.
