Mental Health - resources and conversations

[Jacqui]

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a chance to raise more awareness about the importance for everyone to take care of their mental health. I was just having a conversation the other day with my husband and asked - why don’t we get regular mental health checkups like we do physicals? Why don’t we get regular mental health tests the way we get bloodwork done?

Paying attention to mental health is especially important when we have a loved one with SUD - their mental and ours. Below are topics in the community that address addiction and mental health:

How do you find mental health resources for your loved one?

How do you find mental health for your loved one ? He asked for mental health. He has been sober a couple of weeks and depression and mental state worsening.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health?

After over a year of bringing him to the hospital or calling an ambulance and the hospital just sending him home he’s finally in a facility for substance abuse and mental health. My situation is complicated because for a long time I thought he had Auto Brewery Syndrome but couldn’t find any proof for this. I would ask again and again after you are your not drinking and he’d say no. A few months ago I started finding vodka bottles and he said he didn’t remember buying or drinking them and again …

Does anyone have any experience with a parent being an alcoholic and having mental health issues?

My mom seems to do well for a while doing the sober life for a few weeks, maybe months but then something happens and she goes right back to her destructive ways. My uncle says she’s been diagnosed with manic depressive disorder and even one doctor said bipolar but she won’t accept treatment. The whole family has tried for years. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that she just might always be like this. Wandering from friend to friend, sometimes just sleeping in parks. It’s hard to know w…

Do former addicts experience depression differently?

Do former addicts experience depression differently? What I am trying to say clinical depression is absence of self hygiene, forgetting to eat, staying at home most of the time, suicidal thoughts. But can he still be depressed and I might not know about it? For ex. still go to the gym, shopping, working normal hrs, etc.

You can also check out the Self Care category to see conversations about tending to your own mental health.

For finding a therapist, I like using the Psychology Today website to find therapists near me.

What are some resources that you’ve found helpful? How are you taking care of your mental health?

[Thinkstet]

Hi friends in @PeerGroup4 @PeerGroup5 @PeerGroup6 and @PeerGroup7 -

Mental Health- we are not immune at any point in life= there are times when we are carried by others and times when we carry others. My beef with the way western medicine diagnoses and stigmatizes is like this:

TRUE STORY ALERT:
I go to see the doctor. He says, “how are you feeling?”
I say, “Ok, but I am a bit sad, my mother died last month, so I’m working through that.”
and Now- 10 years later - I have a box on my chart that says HISTORY of DEPRESSION. Well it isn’t that. Thank you very little. I was sad because my mom died. That IS normal.

So this is, to me, why people do not disclose. Because then future employers screen for this sort of thing and you get labeled and that is it. There is no outreach.

Whatever- our society seems slightly unable to accept that we all go through periods of happiness and sadness, loneliness and connectedness, etc. Grrrrrrrr.

On the other hand, since I do have bipolar/ alcoholic father and alcoholic everybody else, I guess it’s worth noting- but the stigma of the medical chart [without any follow up/on] really gets to me.