Recovering Your Mental Health: A Self Help Guide - A Self Help Guide to Recover Your Mental Health

Written by Mary Ellen Copeland, M.S., M.A.

What to do if these feelings and experiences feel overwhelming

If any of the following apply to you, or your feelings and experiences feel overwhelming, do some things to help yourself right away.

• You feel absolutely hopeless and/or worthless.
• You feel like life is not worth living anymore.
• You think a lot about dying, have thoughts of suicide or have planned how you will kill yourself
• You are taking lots of risks that are endangering your life and/or the lives of others.
• You feel like hurting yourself, hurting others, destroying property or committing a crime .

Things you need to do:

• Arrange an appointment with your doctor, a health care worker or a mental health agency. If your symptoms make you a danger to yourself or someone else, insist on immediate care and treatment--a family member or friend may need to do this for you if your symptoms are too severe. If you are taking medicines and you think it would be helpful, ask for a medicine check.
• Ask a friend or family member to stay with you until you feel better -- talk, play cards, watch a funny video together, listen to music, etc..
• Call someone you really like and talk to them about how you are feeling.
• Do something simple that you really enjoy, like "getting lost" in a good book, staring at a beautiful picture, playing with your pet or brushing your hair.
• Write anything you want to in a notebook or on scraps of paper.

You will find other ideas in the next section, Things you can do right away to help yourself feel better. As you learn what helps you to feel better, and take action quickly, you will find that you will spend more and more time feeling well and less time feeling badly.

Sometimes when you feel this bad, you may feel like doing things that are dangerous, frightening to others, or things that will be embarrassing to you or others. Keep in mind that no matter how bad you feel, you are still responsible for your own behavior.

If you possibly can, see a physician or a health care worker you like and trust. These feelings and experiences can be caused or worsened by medical illnesses that you don't know you have--like thyroid problems or diabetes. The sooner you get help, the sooner you will feel better. Insist on help with figuring out what to do about any feelings or experiences that are making you uncomfortable or keeping you from doing the things you want or need to do. If you feel it is necessary, ask to be sent to someone else who knows more about treating these kinds of issues.

Doctors and health care workers can tell you about possible things they can do for you or you can do for yourself that will help you feel better. When you go to see them, take a complete listing of all medicines and anything else you may be using to help yourself feel better, and a list of unusual, uncomfortable or painful physical or emotional symptoms--even if they don't seem important to you. Also describe any difficult issues in your life--both things that are going on now and things that have happened in the past--that may be affecting the way you feel. This will help the doctor give you the best possible advice on what you can do to help yourself. It's always easier to go to the doctor if you take along a good friend. This person can help you remember what the doctor suggests, and could take notes if you want them to.

Your doctor or health care worker is providing you with a service, just like the person who installs your telephone or fixes your car. The only difference is they have experience and expertise in dealing with health issues. Your doctor or health care worker should:

• listen carefully to everything you say and answer your questions.
• be hopeful and encouraging.
• plan your treatment based on what you want and need.
• teach you how to help yourself.
• know about and be willing to try new or different ways of helping you feel better.
• be willing to talk with other health care professionals, your family members and friends about your problems and what can be done about them, if want them to.

Your health care rights include the right to:

• decide for yourself treatments that are acceptable to you and those that are not.
• a second opinion without being penalized.
• change health care workers--this right may be limited by some health care plans.
• have the person or people of your choice be with you when you are seeing your doctor or other health care worker.

Your health care worker may suggest that one or several medicines would help you feel better. Find the answers to the following questions to help you decide whether or not you want to take this medicine, and so that you have important information about the medicine. You can get this information by asking your health care worker or pharmacist, looking it up in a book on medications in the library, or by searching for it on the internet.