Fear and Worry about new experiences can emulate an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety is a part of life. Every time we face change, we tend to get nervous and anxious. When lots of things are changing at once, it’s common to feel overwhelmed.
Does Advice on “Finding Joy” Help or Harm People with Depression?
According to The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, there is a simple formula for creating a life of joy: dedicating your life to compassion and service of others.
Does giving create happiness for the giver?
Does compassion lead to inner peace?
Does a life of service lead to feelings of joy?
While they come from 2 different religious traditions that teach compassion, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu are both walking testimonials to the power of service and its capacity to create joy. They both emit warmth and peacefulness. But these men have devoted their lives to spiritual and religious practice. How can their advice help the rest of us? And how helpful can these ideas prove to mental health?
Many people have criticized the notion that simple practices like meditation and prayer are useful in depression. Sufferers and advocates point out that while increasing everyday happiness is lovely for most of us, the conception that self-help practices can cure depression implies that depressed people aren’t trying hard enough to get better. That increases stigma and adds to the burden of depression.
But I think creating joyfulness in daily life may have a place in the mental health world. Finding joy may help people with mild or early symptoms, or it might function as a preventive measure for some.
There are two distinct groups of people receiving mental health care services in America- the very sick who often receive too little, and the not-so-sick who often receive too much intervention. Certainly compassion and service to others wouldn’t suddenly transform the neurobiology of serious depression, but for people suffering lesser forms of unhappiness, could a life of service be part of the answer? Might such a practice even prevent the harm that comes with aggressive treatment, often not indicated in milder cases?
If non-medication practices can improve mental health for some, the benefits spill over to those with the greatest need as the system unclogs. Resources become available for those who need them most.
Perhaps we should be advising people in mental health treatment to practice things like compassion and service. If those practices bring joy, then that’s wonderful! If compassion doesn’t offer any relief, maybe that’s further evidence that aggressive biologic treatment (like prescription medication) is indicated.
STUCK in the Sick Role: How Illness Becomes as Identity
Can the Solar Eclipse Bring Us Hope for Transformational Change?
Recently, I heard the term “transformational change” applied to businesses and how they grow. And then shortly after, I heard someone use the same term applied to spiritual change. To me, “transformational change” sounds like the growth I see in patients who benefit most from their mental health care. The change does not happen right away. At first, people experience the alleviation of symptoms and the growth of new coping skills. Over time, the momentum of change builds into a new relationship of that person with the world around him and a new relationship with himself. The end result is that he is better than his baseline, before his mental health problems began.
Transformational change also sounds like what occurs in marriage counseling, and in family counseling. Through therapy, relationships are remade.
That term “transformational change” has been popping into my mind this week, coinciding with the solar eclipse. As people struggle individually and as a collective, many seem to imagine that the eclipse will bring hope in a time of hopelessness. People are traveling from around the nation to gather and witness the total eclipse in the heartland. A recent article in Time touted today’s eclipse as “a gift to our divided nation.” The article speaks of American’s profound discontent, hoping the event might bring people of differences together.
Perhaps the symbolism of the event will be a source of hope, not just for people who feel that we are divided from each other, but also for people who feel broken inside and want to heal. Maybe the eclipse will propel some people forward, either in relationship to each other, or perhaps in relationship to themselves.
I hope so.
People need more than simple relief of symptoms, they need to grow. They need to become new in order to truly heal.
STUCK in the Sick Role: How Illness Becomes and Identity
Families Belong on the #MentalHealthCare Treatment Team!
Why aren't we welcoming families onto the team?