Mental, emotional and behavioural disorder - anxiety and depression

This is to help build up an awareness about tension, anxiety, panic, fear, phobia, depression and other obsessive disorders. People affected by such disorders need the help of both a psychiatrist and a counsellor.

A Psychiatrist is a person, a professional, who deals with mental, emotional or behavioural disorders. He emphasizes the use of medicine and various other kinds of medical therapy.
A psychoanalyst is a person who analyzes psychic phenomena and treats mental, emotional or behavioural disorders by emphasizing the importance of the patient talking freely about himself while under treatment, especially about early childhood experiences and about his dreams.
Psychiatric Counsellor is a person who gives professional guidance by utilizing psychological methods, especially in collecting case history, data, using various techniques of a personal interview, and testing interests and aptitudes. He helps to bring back the self-confidence of the patient. In the process, he also teaches how to take care of ones' depression, anxiety etc. There is very little to choose between a psychoanalyst and a psychiatric counsellor. They can as well be the same person. Even a psychiatrist can also be a psychoanalyst and a psychiatric counsellor. Henceforth, the word counsellor will be used to mean both a psychoanalyst and a psychiatric counsellor.

Help from both these professionals, a psychiatrist and a psychiatric counsellor, are needed to cure psychological illness.

A counsellor encourages the psychologically ill person to speak out his problems. This is a very important part of the whole therapy. Along with prescribed medicines, proper counselling is also necessary. Once a person speaks his heart out, he feels comfortable. His problems also can be identified in this way. Hence its importance.

How to know whether one needs psychiatric help.
Mental, emotional or behavioural illness starts in a very subtle manner. It is characterized by low self esteem, not being able to get out of negative thoughts, extreme guilty feeling for no apparent reason, irritation, worry, panic, fear, phobia (fear that is unreal), avoiding criticism, thinking too much about the outcomes highly negatively, inability to socialize, loneliness, expecting something terrible to happen, feeling scared, terrified or frightened, fear of death, feeling isolated and different from all other people, less sleep, or almost total sleeplessness, emotionally sensitive, extremely analytical, which is totally unnecessary, putting too much blame on others etc. The list is not exhaustive.

The very first mistake that affected people make is that they continue to think that they are alright. They think it is a shame to get affected by some psychological illness. So they stay quiet and keep on trying to solve their problems in their own way. Very few people can do this. So outwardly they seem quite ok in the initial or in the mid stages of illness. Also there are many people who do not realize that their problems are anxiety, depression and such other disorder related. This way the situation aggravates. Other people start noticing their mental, emotional or behavioural disorders. This brings in more stress. Mostly, affected people need professional help.

Being mentally, emotionally or behaviourally ill does not mean that a person is weak, and unable to bear the hardships of life or lead a normal life. It is just a disease like all other diseases and is totally curable.

So it is advisable to seek professional help immediately, the moment someone finds that he is unable to perform his daily activities properly because his mind remains busy with something else all the time, and this has been continuing for quite some time. He may also feel like doing nothing during the whole day. The symptoms mentioned before should also be checked for. The affected person may feel detached from his surrounding. Familiar things may start becoming alien, arousing some kind of panic or shock. Other persons may seem intolerable. Keeping a desire suppressed for a long time can also cause psychological disorder.

It is not an easy task to get out of depression. Forgetting the self-destructive thoughts is very difficult. But once cured, one can look back and realize with a very rational mind, how wrong way of thinking can affect the life of a person adversely.

Ultimately one has to be ones' own healer but only after he understands all the techniques used by the psychiatrist and counsellor to cure him. In the long run, only the affected person can understand his own mind perfectly.
It calls for a total transformation in ones' thinking, feeling, lifestyle and behaviour.
A normal person can also suffer from anxiety, depression etc. But they get over it soon, or it is mild so as not to cause any harm. So one must be able to realize when things are going out of control.

Some helpful tips:

Yoga, meditation are very, very important tools to cure psychological illness. Getting busy, concern and care for others forgetting oneself, mild exercise, changing the daily routine as far as practicable, changing the way one had been doing things are some useful tips. Change, like time, is a great healer. Trying to feel as if one has achieved what he desires to, helps a lot. Think positive, control anger rationally, that is by reasoning, not by forcibly suppressing anger. Realize the fact that ones' best friend is he himself. So one must trust his own self and gain confidence. Listen to music. It relaxes the mind. Help from friends and family members is also necessary.

So once again I repeat, when things do not improve or gradually deteriorate, one must immediately go to a psychiatrist. He or she should not waste any more time.

He must attend counselling sessions regularly until the condition becomes normal. One must take the prescribed medicines regularly and follow all the instructions given by the psychiatrist and counsellor very religiously. If any medicine aggravates the condition or causes new problems to appear, one must immediately inform this to the concerned psychiatrist. He may change the medicine or dose or whatever. One must not stop taking medicines on his own, thinking that I am cured. It is up to the psychiatrist to do that.

Even after getting cured one must keep in touch with his psychiatrist and counsellor.

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