Anxiety | Stress and Suicide

Anxiety And Thoughts of Suicide

Anxiety disorders can affect a lot of people across the world. Some individualts have the disorder with thoughts of suicide that need treatment and if left untreated can have serious consequenses. If you are one of these individuals with thoughts of suicide due to anxiety, even on an occasional basis, ask for help from your local mental health clinic. It is important that your call your doctor or just talking to friends and family members, they may be able to lead you in the right direction. Anxiety disorders are common when you have a lot of stress in your life and it is not the end of your life-you can overcome them.

If you’re having thoughts of suicide, there is nothing other people can do to make you feel better about yourself or how you feel. However, they can give you the tools needed to do cope with your anxiety and stress. Lots of people kill themselves every year using suicidal methods like hanging, shooting, cutting, and overdosing, but these deaths are a real shame, since every single person has value in life and in their community. You may feel hopeless right now, but there are people who can show you how to feel better. Although it is very difficult to deal with anxiety, others have gone through the same thing and can teach you methods for overcoming.

Call 9-1-1 or your local suicide hotline immediately if you are having thoughts of injuring yourself, for whatever reason. You are not alone in this ordeal, or else these phone lines would not exist. You can call anonymously in order to simply talk to someone about your problems. There is no pressure to do or not do anything-it is simply a tool to talk to someone and hear new ideas. Remember, there is help for all of us, just look for it.

Pain and sadness happens to all of us and is normal in every single person’s life, although many people hide it very well. However, if you find that your anxiety disorder is causing too much pain for you to bear, you can do one of two things: work to reduce the pain or work to increase your skills and resources for dealing with the pain. Although you may feel alone right now, millions of people are getting the help they need and living happy lives.

If nothing else, take some time to think about things that are bothering you. Even if you’ve had a horrible day, give yourself a few hours or days or even weeks to make a decision on ending your life. In that time, consider all of the options available to you and think about the other people your suicide will hurt. Suicide is not the answer to relief from pain in most cases, so by truly examining your feelings, you can work towards happier days. Remember that these thoughts too will pass with time as the 12 Step Programs always say.

Telling Your Family About A Mental Health Issue

Family issues can be a stigma attached to mental health issues. It can sometimes be hugely difficult for a sufferer to confide in individuals about their condition.  A lot of people will not acknowledge  that they have a problem such as a drug user ignores their drug addiction. They may feel that their confession will be laughed off as being all in the mind, or that it will change the way people look at them. In many cases the fear will be disproportionate to reality – but then, this is how mental health issues affect people.

There is a traditional opinion that mental health issues are somehow less serious than physical conditions. Because a physical condition is usually something that can be seen, there is a tendency to rate them as being more serious than mental health issues. But depression, OCD, SAD and others have affected people so badly that they kill themselves – so it is only right that they are treated seriously too.

In most cases, the anxiety over telling a family member of a mental health condition will be misplaced. They will be concerned for the sufferer and want them to get better. As yet, widespread understanding of mental health issues is not uniformly great, and it may take more explanation than a physical condition. However, in the end the family member will want their brother, son, wife or other family member to feel better, and will learn what they can to help them.

Aside from this, a family has a right to know that their relative is ill. They would be horrified if the secret went to the grave and they had not had a chance to help. It may be difficult to face up to, but telling family is important.

Can Herbal Medicine Cure Anxiety Problems?

In the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the world went mad for Prozac. Everyone, seemingly, was on the most famous anti-depressant of them all… until a few, select clinical studies showed it could actually worsen symptoms. Even though expert doctors tried to stress that Prozac was completely safe in all but a few cases (as with any drug), the damage was done – drugs for mental health problems are still distrusted by many to this day.

This leads many people suffering from depression or anxiety problems to turn their backs on conventional medicines, and seek out a herbal solution. There are some famous remedies touted, the most famous of which being St. John’s Wort as an aid for both depression and anxiety problems. Anxiety specifically has the famous Rescue Remedies, based on herbal ingredients, which claim to calm and soothe the user when ingested.

So do they work? Well, yes and no. For a start, with any medicine, herbal or otherwise, there is a placebo element that must be considered. If someone with an anxiety problem is told that Rescue Remedy will absolutely, undoubtedly help them, they may believe it will help so much that it actually does. While the medicine itself has not helped, the effect is the same – mind over medical matter, almost.

Bearing this in mind, it is important to say there is no firm, clinical evidence that St. John’s Wart or anything other herbal remedy can help with an anxiety problem. There is certainly no physiological evidence. It would appear your money is best spent on therapies and psychiatric understanding, though there is no reason not to give a herbal remedy a try once in awhile.

Is “Mental” Health Really Just In The Mind?

Imagine you are asked to describe what depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Bi Polar Disorder are. Would you say “mental health problems”, or similar? Most would, and there is a general perception that these problems are purely based in the mind. There is still something of an attitude that people with mental health and anxiety problems should be able to “snap out of it” or get over it, just like that. Yet many mental illnesses actually have physical reasons.

For example, clinical depression. A much-misused term, depression is now used to describe someone feeling a bit low. However, if someone has full, clinical depression, they will experience long periods of horrifically low mood, low motivation and a general feeling of emptiness. A cruel illness, but one that is described as being mental, and a regular target for the “pull yourself out of it!” brigade.

Yet depression does have a physical basis. Depression is caused by a lower-than-average amount of serotonin in the body. Also known as the “feel good” hormone, serotonin controls the mood, personality and feelings of an individual. If serotonin levels are low, the individual will experienced depressive, low thoughts. This is a physical problem with mental evidence, but it is physical nonetheless – anti-depressants work on increasing serotonin levels, and tend to have a decent success rate.

Furthermore, preliminary scans have shown those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder have enlarged lobes at the front of the brain. These lobes control our worry and anxiety mechanism, and when enlarged, the anxiety goes into overdrive – resulting in what we know as OCD.

So these mental illnesses are, more often than not, physical in basis after all – and one can no more “shake off” or “get over” a hormone imbalance than one can “shake off” a broken leg!