Mental Healthcare of Young Mothers

The birth of a baby can trigger a range of powerful emotions such as excitement, joy, even fears. But it can also result in something you might not expect-postpartum depression. It is a condition which affects the mental health of many young mothers. The symptoms are the following: strong feelings of sadness, anxiety, or irritability, emotional stress which interferes with taking care of self or family,tearfulness,trouble to motivate oneself to do normal, routine chores, compulsive overeating or diminished interest in food, lack of interest in self grooming, inability to sleep when tired or too much sleeping, trouble concentrating or making decisions, forgetfulness, loss of pleasure or interest in doing things which used to be fun, undue worry about the baby, lack of interest in the new baby, fear of harming the new baby, thoughts of self harm or suicide.

The causes of postpartum depression could be hormonal changes. Sometimes the hormonal changes in a woman's body may trigger some symptoms. The amount of the two female hormones estrogen and progesterone increase greatly during pregnancy in a woman's body. During the first 24 hours after childbirth, these amounts decrease rapidly and keep dropping till it reaches the normal level. Apart from these biological changes, numerous physical, psychological and environmental factors also contribute to postpartum depression such as fatigue, broken sleeping patterns, insufficient rest etc.

Mental Health

There are various breakthroughs in medical sciences dedicated to the mental healthcare of young mothers. The most common treatment for depression is the use of antidepressant medication, psychotherapy or a combination of the two. The treatment depends on the nature and severity of the depression and to some extent on the individual preference. In severe cases medication is generally recommended under the supervision of a psychiatrist.

It is necessary to help young mothers cope with postpartum depression. It is to be borne in mind that everything cannot be done single handedly by the young mother. She should get sufficient rest when the baby sleeps. Friends, relatives or spouse can be solicited to assist in housework, baby care and cooking. The young mother should find time for herself and the spouse. One need not be guilty if the medications make it impossible to breastfeed the baby. A good mother is the one who takes care of herself so that she is able to take care of the baby. When the baby starts to have regular sleep during night, it is time to think about the mother's diet and exercise program to aid her get back into shape. Exercise and proper diet will improve the mood and give a boost to the self esteem as well. Breastfeeding will help to jump start on shedding the baby weight.

If depression is interfering with one's ability to take care of the baby, it doesn't make one a bad mother. Be aware of the fact that it is only a passing phase and can be treated effectively. It is imperative to get professional help and follow the doctor's instructions if one is suffering from postpartum depression. Finally, the support of spouse and family is vital to assure mental healthcare of young mothers.

Mental Healthcare of Young Mothers

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Geriatric Mental Health Mistakes in Nursing Homes

Medical care for the elderly takes center stage making mental health care take a back seat, especially in nursing homes. A great deal of time is spent assessing vital bodily functions in order to ensure nursing home residents are as comfortable as possible.

Because this is so time consuming, mental health care is easily overlooked even though it can add so much to quality of life.

Mental Health

There are other ways mental health care mistakes are made in the care of geriatrics. Another major mistake is the way treatment is approached by psychiatrists. Depression is very common in nursing home residents. Their way of life is drastically changed. The usual treatment with antidepressant medications does not address how someone can deal with these changes.

Behavioral problems often arise in residents with Alzheimer's disease. Drugging the resident as a way to diminish the behavior is usually the last resort but it is very common and disturbing.

Over-medicating is a prevalent problem that doesn't seem to be improving. Medications can cause symptoms of mental illness which is an easy problem to ignore because the elderly are expected to suffer some type of mental distress. Both psychiatric medications as well as with non-psychiatric medications have interaction risks in the elderly.

Nursing home residents have difficulties speaking, ambulating and taking care of their personal needs. This can be humiliating when concerns cannot be appropriately communicated. The downside is someone never receives appropriate help.

Recreational therapy can address loneliness and keep residents involved in social activities but does not appropriately address individual concerns that affect behavior and mental wellness.

An integrated wellness approach is an ideal way to treat geriatric mental health in nursing homes. Not all mental health concerns are best addressed medically considering the high risk of over-medication that doesn't address behaviors or recent events that precipitate normal grieving.

Family members who know how to evaluate their loved ones' situations and effectively communicate their concerns can make a huge and positive impact. An elder care consultant who specializes in a holistic well-assessment can fill in the gaps not managed by medical and psychiatric care.

Geriatric Mental Health Mistakes in Nursing Homes

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Does My 4-5 Year Old Need to See a Mental Health Professional?

Parents often wonder if their child is showing typical behavior for a 4-5 year. The most pressing question that parents ask is when it is really time to seek professional help from a qualified mental health professional? This answer may seem confusing at times so the aim of this article is to help distinguish when it really is the time to seek help for your 4-5 year old.

Although it is very common for children in the age range to still tantrum and throw fits, it because worth it to talk to a mental professional is your 4-5 year old is constantly fitting. Most importantly if your child is fitting 5+ more times a day with the average tantrum lasting more than 15-20 minutes. There is a possibility if it is taking your child that long to settle down after a frustrating moment, something may be going on emotionally.

Mental Health

Secondly, if you child's default way of communicating with his/her family member is to kick, bite, punch, kick, destroy things or attack other, this is also an indicator of need to get outside help. Children in the age of 4-5 have more words at his/her disposal than a 2-3 year old, so becoming physically violent with others at this stage may mean it is time to seek help.

The 3rd indicator is the deliberate abuse towards a younger sibling and/or animal. I am not talking about playing to rough with a younger sibling, cat, or dog because the child is just unaware of how rough he/she is playing (then the child feels bad for hurting others and says "I'm sorry"). I am talking about the purposeful and deliberate attack on younger siblings and animals without showing any remorse.

In conclusion, if you happen to see the 3 above indicators, it may be time that there is something going on emotionally beneath the behaviors that need to be addressed. As a parent when you see these things going on over the course of a few months, it may be time to make an appointment to see a qualified mental health professional.

Do you want to learn exactly how to eliminate your child's out-of-control and defiant behavior without using Punishments, Time-Outs, Behavioral Plans, or Rewards?

Does My 4-5 Year Old Need to See a Mental Health Professional?

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The Adrenal Glands and Your Mental Health

Hormones are major links in the mind body connection. They are chemical the chemical messengers that can turn on and off a variety of genes in every cell in your body-including your brain! All known hormonal imbalances may manifest as psychiatric disorders, such as depression, mania, anxiety, ADD, memory disturbances, dementia and even psychosis. On the other hand, bearing the burden of any of these disorders, over time, will affect your hormonal function as well. Hormonal imbalances also mimic the side effects of anti-depressants by causing weight gain, brain fog, sexual problems, and depleted energy levels. It is clear then, that hormonal problems go hand-in-hand with depression, and sorting out "hormone triggered" depression from clinical depression is not always easy. Most patients have a mixture of the two. For this reason, in the practice of Whole Psychiatry, a detailed assessment of the hormonal systems should be a routine part of every psychiatric evaluation.

A hormone called cortisol (made by your adrenal gland) is part of the body's shock absorber system. We all drive down the road of life. and we hit real or imagined pot holes. If our shock absorbers are functioning well, its like we are driving a Cadillac. We feel the pothole, but only briefly and then we make a quick recovery. If we have poor shock absorbers, we feel like we are driving an old pick-up truck over a dirt road. We hit a pot hole, are stunned by it, and may even veer off the road.

Mental Health

What determines how our shock absorbers work? Some of it is genetic, and some of it is set by the time we are 11 or 12 weeks of age! In addition, chronic stress, nutritional and chemical factors, social environments, attitudes, percieved sense of control, spiritual orientation, and interpretation of the meaning of events play an important role.

Your body's glands take their cues from your brain. When an event is perceived, a meaning is assigned to the event, and a hormonal response appropriate to the assigned meaning occurs. Thus your brain determines the exact timing and amount of cortisol that is released into your blood stream: too much cortisol at night, and you can't fall sleep, too little cortisol in the morning, and you can barely peel yourself out of bed!

By the same token, your brain then gets a message from your adrenal glands via the cortisol in your blood stream, which provides a status update on hormone production and release. The constant relay of information between your brain and your adrenal glands keeps your brain, immune system and stress response functioning normally.

But this system's equilibrium can be upset when you take a blow from, say, depression, manic depression, anxiety, chronic stress (such as a divorce or chronic illness), chronic pain, or recurrent bouts of low blood sugar. In fact any of a number of hormonal imbalances (e.g., adrenal, thyroid, reproductive hormones) are one of the major reasons that many anti-depressant treatments don't work, or why patients with bipolar disorder are not stabilized.

In summary, if you have a mood disorder, check into your hormonal status, looking at adrenal function, thyroid function (check a TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3, body temperature), blood sugar regulation, reproductive hormones, and melatonin.

Give the wide variety and effect of pesticides and hormone interrupters in our world, I strongly advocate for organically grown foods. Aside from the superior nutritional content, and health benefits seen in experimental animals, there is growing concern that the chemicals we accept in our environment cause significant hormonal problems in the population at large, by mimicking or blocking the functions of our own hormonal systems.

The Adrenal Glands and Your Mental Health

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Mental Health Insurance and Parity

Mental Health Insurance will soon be treated the same as medical and surgical benefits. Addiction Treatment benefits will have the same rate of return as those as a surgical procedure. When the congressional economic recovery package was signed on October 3rd the Mental Health and Addiction Parity Act was a rider on that package.

This Act will lead to wholesale changes in the way insurance benefits are written for those suffering with mental health problems and addiction problems. Since 1973 when HMOS started limiting the treatment benefits for addicts and alcoholics the number of days allowed in drug rehabs has dwindled to what it is today. Some policies allow only detox with no reimbursement for any continuing care or aftercare.

Mental Health

Families faced with the financial cost for addiction treatment often felt betrayed by the provider when the coverage just wasn't there. Some people would mortgage their homes others would be forced to put the bill on their credit cards and still others just went without treatment.

The Mental Health and Addiction Parity Act will impact over 100 million people enrolled in state regulated or employer-funded plans. The bill will go into effect in January 1, 2010. This is not a free pass for drug rehab centers and eating disorder treatment programs to bill providers outrageously. Benefits will continue to be managed and medical necessity will still have to be proven. What this bill does accomplish is group health plans will be required to raise the cap to match the medical surgical plans giving the coverage necessary for addicts, alcoholics and those with mental health problems to receive the help they deserve.  

Mental Health Insurance and Parity

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Proceedings of 6th Rocky Mt Region Disaster Mental Health Conf by Ed G W Doherty - Review

Rocky Mountain DMH Institute Press (2008)

ISBN 9781932690569

Mental Health

The 6th Annual Rocky Mountain Disaster Mental Health Conference was held in Cheyenne, Wyoming from November 8-10, 2007. The main theme was: "From Crisis to Recovery: Resilience and Strategic Planning for the Future." Presenters from the conference put their materials into articles which are in this book. This is an excellent resource for people who attended the conference because they can use this as a reference for the information presented.

The purpose of this conference is to present information, "to promote the development and application of practice, research and training in disaster mental health, critical incident stress management, traumatology, and other emergency response interventions and to promote community awareness, resilience and recovery." This information is needed by people who deal with critical incident stress management, behavioral health professionals, first responders and others who might be dealing with crisis situations.

I did not attend this conference; however, I found the information presented to be fascinating. Several important topics were discussed, in areas of critical importance to what is happening in our world today. It is imperative that people who are involved in crisis situations read this material. It is all well written and presented in a way that is easily understood and very interesting.

Some of the topics covered traumatic stress in the workplace with issues like police suicide. Others involved emergency preparedness. It is so important that people who deal with emergency and disaster situations are appropriately trained and have resources to handle the stressors of dealing with these situations. Many times, their lives have been impacted in a way in which they are unable to handle the aftermath of having dealt with horrific situations, such as having to deal with an airplane crashing. There are also discussions about the importance of having disaster readiness plans in places such as tourist vacation spots where natural disasters or terroristic acts can occur. In addition to needing to be trained in advance about how to handle these events, people also need to have an understanding of the traditions of the cultures that they might be helping.

"Proceedings of the 6th Rocky Mountain Region Disaster Mental Health Conference" is a must have for first responders and mental health professionals. Addressing the needs of people who work in these fields is critical. The better trained they are to be emotionally equipped for disasters, the better they can help others. I think that the 120 pages of information covered in this book will be some of the most important information needed by people in this field today.

Proceedings of 6th Rocky Mt Region Disaster Mental Health Conf by Ed G W Doherty - Review

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Mental Health's Importance in Today's World - A Psychologist's Perspective

A growing recognition of the fact that "mental health is fundamental to a person's overall health, indispensable to personal well-being and instrumental to leading a balanced and productive life" likely contributes to the fact that about 15% of our country's population now use some form of mental health services in any given year. Nonetheless, despite effective treatments, according to Dr. Satcher's 1999 Surgeon General's Mental Health report, "Nearly half of all Americans who have a severe mental illness fail to seek treatment". The fact that nearly one in five Americans are affected by a mental disorder, reinforces the understanding that "few Americans are untouched by mental illness", whether directly or indirectly.

Clinical anxiety and clinical depression are real, treatable conditions that interfere with a person's overall well-being and ability to do many of the things that they would otherwise enjoy. A suffer of clinical depression can no more "snap out of it," than a person suffering from a seizure has the will-power to stop taking a seizure.

Mental Health

Mental illnesses range from clinical anxiety and depression to Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. Anxiety disorders, the most common form of mental illness, affect more than 10% of Americans yearly. Almost 25% of Americans will suffer an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Every May, thousands of sites throughout the country offer free, local anxiety screenings, as part of National Anxiety Disorders Screening Day. Each October, national sites off free screenings for depression, as part of National Depression Screening Day.

For more information about N.A.D.S.D., N.D.S.D., as well as a complete on-line copy of the Surgeon General's 500 page mental health publication, visit: www.SimplifiedHealth.com/links.htm

Jerry Solfanelli

Mental Health's Importance in Today's World - A Psychologist's Perspective

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