How do you cope with mental health
Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological and social well-being. It's important to take care of inpatient mental health so you can lead a full life.
Psychotherapy is the most common way to treat a mental illness. It's usually done in individual sessions with a trained mental health professional. These sessions can be at a hospital, medical clinic or in your home via telehealth.
Therapy
Talk therapy is a common treatment for mental health conditions. It can be used alone or in combination with medicines. It can improve a person’s quality of life and allow them to return to full functioning. It is important to get help when you have a mental health condition because untreated mental illness causes many problems, including disability and premature death.
A therapist can help you find ways to cope with depression. They will also teach you new skills to help you control your emotions. They may also suggest changes to your diet or lifestyle. You can find a therapist through your primary care physician, Employee Assistance Programs or online resources.
Talk therapy is known as psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. It involves sharing personal feelings and thoughts with a mental health professional in a confidential setting. While conversations are the main focus of psychotherapy, patients can sometimes be asked to perform tasks such as keep a journal or problem-solve in their daily lives. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and licensed marriage and family therapists are trained to provide psychotherapy.
Medication
Many mental illnesses respond to medication that alters brain chemicals. This can improve the effectiveness of psychotherapy and other treatments.
It may take a few weeks or months before you see an improvement in your symptoms. Be patient, and work with your healthcare provider to find a medication that works best for you with the least side effects.
Psychiatric medications can improve the quality of life for people with mental illness. Symptoms often improve enough to allow people to have meaningful relationships, hold jobs or participate in recreational activities.
Occasionally, mental health conditions become so severe that someone needs to be hospitalized in a psychiatric facility. This is generally recommended when the person can't care for themselves, or when they're in danger of harming themselves or others. Treatment options include 24-hour inpatient care, partial or day hospitalization, and residential treatment. Brain-stimulation treatments are also sometimes used, but these are reserved for situations when medication and psychotherapy don't work.
Brain-stimulation treatments
In addition to medication and psychotherapy, MUSC psychiatrists may recommend brain stimulation treatments that use electricity or magnets to directly change the way your brain works. These include electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.
ECT uses electric currents to trigger a brief seizure in the brain, and it appears to cause changes in brain chemistry that help relieve depression. It’s the best-studied of these treatments, and it’s used when other therapies don’t work.
For rTMS, a treatment coil the size of your palm is placed on your scalp over areas of your brain that control mood regulation. A machine delivers short electromagnetic pulses through the coil, which simulate nerve cells in the targeted area.
MUSC is one of the first centers in South Carolina to offer rTMS for treatment-resistant depression, and it’s also FDA-approved for obsessive-compulsive disorder and tobacco/nicotine addiction (smoking cessation). This procedure doesn’t require anesthesia and you can read or listen to music during the 20-minute sessions.
Psychiatric hospitalization
No one wants to go to a hospital, especially not for psychiatric care. But the truth is that sometimes inpatient treatment is what you need, particularly if your symptoms are out of control.
You may be voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital, a psychiatric unit in a general hospital or a residential treatment facility, or you might be involuntarily committed if you are found to be a danger to yourself or others. Psychiatric hospitalization allows you to be closely monitored and accurately diagnosed, get your medications right away and receive the treatments you can't have at home.
A stay in a psychiatric hospital can also serve as a bridge to outpatient treatment, where you'll be able to continue living your life while receiving the mental health care you need. It can be a very difficult decision, but it's a good option for many people who need psychiatric help. If you're considering psychiatric hospitalization, talk to your psychiatrist about your options.