Mental Health Patients: 5 Important Tips to Deal with Mental Health Patients

Introduction  

Mental health comprises the ability to think, to emote, and how a person behaves in response to certain situations.  It also involves processing a set of information arising out of a problem, retaining that information in memory for a considerable period, and using that information to make decisions.  Mental health is also about knowing what such decisions would bring probable consequences.

Mental Health Patients

A mental health patient is one in whom all the domains or sometimes only some of the domains are affected.  These domains may be affected mildly to very severely.  Sometimes, the mental health patient has other physical health conditions, too.  Lifestyle choices like physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, and diet affect both psychological and physical health (Stampfer et al., 2005). 

• Certain physical health conditions like diabetes, hypothyroidism, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, and obesity can affect a mental health patient. 

Very often, the mental health patient may not be aware of their mental health condition.  Unaware of it, they may keep ignoring it.  The mental health condition then can become more severe and can persist for many months to years.  It can then affect the physical health of the mental health patient. 

• For instance, let us consider a mental health patient who is suffering from depressive disorder.  If they are oblivious to their condition, care will not come to them.  As time passed, the disease would only increase.  It would affect the patients’ physical activities, sleep, and eating patterns.  It then starts affecting physical health, too, which may have been untouched initially.

Symptoms of Mental Health Patient

  Depending on what the mental health condition is and how severe it is, symptoms may vary in mental health patients. 

1. Sleep Disturbances: It is observed that in most mental health patients, sleep is affected adversely.  In some, they may sleep less, and in other mental health conditions, they may sleep more than what is considered healthy. 
2. Disrupted Sleep: Some mental health patients may complain that although they may have slept for an adequate number of hours, their sleep is very disturbed.  They wake up many times in between.
3. Daytime Dysfunction: Some mental health patients may lament that due to poor nocturnal sleep, their days are unproductive because they doze off frequently in between work. 
4. Universal Mental Health Benefit: The effect of improving sleep quality on composite mental health was statistically significant, regardless of the presence of physical and mental health comorbidities (Scott A.J.  et al., 2021). 
5. Unexplained prolonged sadness: In depressive disorder, the symptoms may be low mood, which has persisted long enough without any apparent reason. 
6. Loss of Interest: The concerned mental health patient may not like to indulge in activities that they would have liked to do. 
7. Unexplained Fatigue: Sometimes, there may be unexplained fatigue in depressive disorder.  Such fatiguability bothers the mental health patient and affects their work. 
8. Difficulty Concentrating: Many would be unable to focus on tasks. 
9. Generalized anxiety: The inability to focus may also be present in other mental health conditions like anxiety disorders.  Other symptoms of anxiety disorders are feeling restless and apprehensive all the time as if something bad is going to happen. 
10. Characterized by Sudden Intense Anxiety Episodes: Sometimes, the symptoms of anxiety might come in a crescendo, stay for a few minutes to hours, and then decrease.  Many times, such attacks arrive unexpectedly.  The unpredictability of the occurrence of the symptoms is characteristic of this disorder, known as panic disorder.  Panic disorder consists of frequently occurring panic attacks.  Here, the person may have accompanying choking sensation, perspiration, palpitation, tingling in the stomach, lightheadedness, and other physiological symptoms.

What Should You do If someone Is a Mental Health Patient?  

The attitudes and approaches of those around a mental health patient can have an impact on the outcome of the illness.  If we are around someone who has a mental health issue, we can act at various levels.

1. Mental Health Awareness: At the societal level, we can create awareness about such conditions and mobilize support for those with mental health issues. 
2. Removing The stigma around mental Health: Erasing many myths surrounding mental health issues can remove the stigma around mental health issues and mental health patients. 
3. Community Mental Health Support: We can create social structures that would screen for such mental health patients without having any prejudice and mobilize quick access to mental health care in time of need. 
4. Social inclusion: Such social structures would be more inclusive of mental health patients and their caregivers. 
5. Community-Centered: We can pave the way for the treatment process to be more holistic and community-driven. 
6. Family therapy: At the family level, we can work on the factors or triggers that precipitate mental health issues.  As a unit, we can work to modify those factors which maintain such conditions. 
7. Social support: By strengthening family ties, we can bring a sense of belonging to mental health patients.
8. Bias awareness: At the individual level, we need to work on removing any existing prejudices we may have against mental health patients.

Treatment  of Mental Health Patients  

Globally, inpatient treatment focuses mainly on severe mental health conditions, while outpatient psychiatry focuses on common mental health conditions  (Stein D.J. et al., 2022).

1. Medicines and psychological measures: Treatment of mental health patients consists mostly of medicines and psychological measures. 
2. Neuromodulation techniques: Sometimes, neuromodulation techniques like repetitive trans-magnetic stimulation may be used in conjunction with medicines and psychology.
3. Holistic treatment: It is observed that during the acute stage, when symptoms are severe, medicines help stabilize them.  After that, psychological measures are used along with medicines to address underlying issues, thoughts, emotions, and conflicts.  As mental health conditions are mainly due to changes in the proportions of the different neurotransmitters in our brain, these medicines work on resuming the equilibrium of these neurotransmitters. 
4. Crisis intervention: Sometimes, a mental health patient may become agitated to the point of becoming aggressive to self and others. In such a scenario, certain medicines would be used to promptly and effectively control the agitation. Doing so would also help the treating team continue with the management plan. 
5. PRN Medication: Certain medicines may be used as and when required. 
6. Cognitive restructuring: The psychological processes aim to work on the behavioral and emotional deficits and try to alter the faulty thought processes, if any.
7. Resilience: Besides, it works on developing interpersonal skills and resilience to cope with loss and failure. 
8. Psychological processes: Psychological processes, as a part of treatment, also work on improving family dynamics and role transitions of mental health patients.

5 Important Tips to Deal with Mental Health Patients  

1. Empathy: We should be receptive to their feelings.  By acknowledging and accepting the way they are, we are enabling mental health patients to be more forthcoming.  They would open up to us and let us know of their apprehensions and thoughts.  
2. Patience: We should not react angrily to any agitation that mental health patients may show.  If we can rationalize that such behavior is because of the disease process, it helps us to keep calm.  Such an attitude towards them can stop further aggression.
3. Giving space to mental health patients:  At times, we may over-involve ourselves with mental health patients out of concern for their well-being.  We must resist doing so, know where to draw the line, and give space to the mental health patient.
4. Non-judgemental: We should consistently work towards making the environment around such mental health patients as non-judgmental as possible.  We should proactively work towards removing any prejudices others might have towards mental health patients.
5. Supportive System: Mental health patients might find the journey from medicines to therapy to social reintegration an ordeal. We, around them, can bridge this gap by constantly reassuring them and offering help when needed.

Conclusion

Mental health patients are not a separate entity but part of society.  Integrating treatment into society and at work ensures continuity of care.  We can bring in the sense of inclusivity by not labeling them as mental health patients but by addressing them by their names or by the set of skills they possess.  

References

1. Stampfer M (2005). Weight Loss and Mortality: What does the Evidence show? (PLoS Med2(6):e181)
2. Alexander J. Scott, Thomas L. Webb, Marrissa Martyn-St James, Georgina Rowse, Scott Weich Improving sleep quality leads to better mental health: Ameta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.  (Sleep Medicine Reviews, volume 60, December 2021, 101556)
3. Dan J. Stein, Steven J. Shoptaw, Daniel V. Vigo, Crick Lund, PimCuijpers, Jason Bantjes, Norman Sartorius, Mario Maj Psychiatric diagnosis and treatment in the 21st century: paradigm shifts versus incremental integration.  (World Psychiatry, volume 21, issue 3)