Tag Archives: doctors

Practical Advice For Living Successfully With A Mental Illness

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There is a multitude of things I had to learn to manage when I got sick. There are many practical, everyday tasks that must be fulfilled in order to stay in the game. In all of my trial-and-error learning, I’ve figured out some very crucial things. If you’re mentally ill, I hope you learn to do all of these things too.Above the Spiral CC

The first and biggest is managing medicine. You have to take every dose at the right time every day, or it’s not going to work for you. If you feel like your medicine isn’t helping, this may be the culprit. Even the perfect medication only works if you put it in your body on time, every single day, and that is a much bigger undertaking than one would assume. I strongly recommend putting alarms on your phone for every dose-time. When I started, I had to put a backup alarm on, too, for ten minutes after my dose-time, because I got used to hearing the alarm, turning it off, and then forgetting about it and not taking my medication. If your memory is impaired (as mine is), this will be even more challenging, but if you stick to this routine, you will eventually Continue reading →

Help! I Think I’m Mentally Ill!

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So, you think you may have a mental illness. Time to start the process of getting a doctor. If you’re unsure about whether or not you need a doctor, ask yourself if your mental state is causing you severe pain or problems functioning. If it is, you need a doctor. Make an appointment with a psychiatrist today, even if there is a long waiting list, so that you’ll have an appointment sometime in the hopefully near future.

Now sit down and write out your symptoms. Common symptoms include bad moods, mood swings, depression, hallucinations, anxiety, irritability, engaging in risky behaviors like drug use or unsafe sex, intense sadness, suicidal thoughts, compulsive behaviors, abnormal eating, mania, sleep problems, self-harm or mutilation, or specific troubling fears. Once you’ve written down the symptoms you know you have, try to identify anything that may have triggered the symptom. An example would be Continue reading →

Professional Help: The People You Need On Your Team

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You have two kinds of professionals that can help you. There are professionals who perform talk therapy and there are professionals who prescribe medicine.

Professionals who do talk therapy include psychologists, therapists, social workers, counselors, and analysts. They can help you sort out your feelings and find solutions to problem thoughts or behavior.

Professionals who can prescribe medication are doctors (with a few exceptions). Doctors specializing in mental illness are usually psychiatrists. It is important to not confuse a “psychiatrist” (who prescribes medication) with a “psychologist” (who treats patients with psychotherapy) because those are distinctly different professions requiring different degrees of education and employing different strategies for treatment.

Psychiatrists can be either a doctor of medicine (M.D.) or Continue reading →