Mental Health & Wellbeing

The 2 most common treatments for mental health are medication or talking treatments, but there are many other options available.

Talking treatments are often with a trained professional where you speak about specific problems or memories, sometimes working towards improving relationships with others. Speaking with a professional can help you to:

• Deal with a specific problem 
• Cope with upsetting memories or experiences 
• Improve relationships 
• Develop more helpful ways of living day-to-day

The most common form of talking therapy is 'Cognitive Behavioural Therapy' or 'CBT'. CBT is a relatively short-term treatment that aims to identify connections between your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and to help you develop practical skills to manage any negative patterns that may be causing you difficulties.

Medication treatments aim to treat the symptoms of the mental illness but not so much curing the source of the problem. They might include sleeping pills, antidepressants, antipsychotics or mood stabilisers.

You should try and encourage them to get some help or advice, initially from a GP. Unfortunately, your friend/relative might not want to see the GP as they might not think they are unwell or think that the GP will not be able to help them. Try to do your best to put yourself in your friend/relatives shoes and understand how they feel. Try and always bring the topic up at the right time when you are both calm and remember to be patient.

You could offer to go with them to a GP or offer some suggestions as to why they are feeling/acting this way. Ensure that they know that anything you tell them you will keep private and that they have your trust.

Make mental health a well-spoken about a topic in your business so people feel like there isn't such a stigma surrounding it if they are experiencing ill mental health. Workplaces should also have a Mental Health at Work Plan, to highlight good mental health of all employees and demonstrate the support that is available for those who need it.

Managers and supervisors should also be leading by example and openly talking about mental health to all of their staff. Providing good working conditions and making reasonable adjustments for staff can aim to prevent ill mental health to by looking to reduce things like stress in the workplace.  

Sadly, 1 in 4 people experience a mental health problem in the UK each year. It’s much more of a common problem than people think.

There are two different types of stress - external and internal stress. External stress comes from things outside of our bodies, things like our job, noise, injury, toxins, bacteria, relationships, situations and our physical environment. Internal stress comes from inside our bodies and can determine how the body responds to the external stress we experience. Examples of internal stress are: feelings, imagination or anticipation, memory, general health and nutritional status, emotional health and the amount of sleep you get.

Managing stress will relate to how you can confront the external stress or change your internal factors and change how you deal with stress.

Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D., a world-renowned psychologist defines the difference between stress and pressure as the following:

Stress - can refer to a situation and the demands and resources it requires to meet the demands.

Pressure - is the way you perceive a situation about how your performance can depend on the outcome.

Employers have a responsibility to look after the health and safety of their employees, stress comes under this bracket. As an employer, you need to ensure that staff are not experiencing stress so much so that it is impacting their health and their life outside of work. Support should be provided if someone is unhappy at work, some workplaces have started to implement Mental Health First Aiders so that people can talk to someone if they are stressed. Workplaces should aim to take away the stigma around things like stress and Mental Health and talk openly about them in the workplace.

Stress affects the body more than people realise. Just some of the ways that it impacts body are:

• Headaches
• Low sex drive
• Increase heart rate
• Heartburn
• Risk of heart attack
• High blood pressure
• Fertility issues
• Missed periods
• Weakened immune system
• Erectile dysfunction
• Tense muscles

As well as the effects that it can have on your body, there are also many other symptoms of stress. Stress might make you feel:

• Upset, aggressive, impatient
• Anxious or nervous
• Sense of dread
• Neglected or lonely
• Uninterested in things that you usually would be
• Unable to enjoy things you normally would
• Thoughts racing and consuming your attention

Stress can also impact your behaviour by:

• Constantly worrying
• Avoiding things
• Snapping at people
• Increase in smoking or drinking
• Unable to concentrate
• Feeling tearful
• Biting nails or picking skin

Stress is not always avoidable, but there changes that you can make or things you can do to prevent getting stressed. Some things you can try to combat stress are:

• Make sure to exercise - exercise can be an outlet and stress reliever to some.
• Accept things you can't change - don’t let things you have no control over affect you so much
• Positivity - be grateful for the positive things, and focus on them.
• Connections - having a good support network can help you with and share your troubles.
• Challenge - set yourself goals and challenges to build yourself with confidence and challenge yourself.
• Avoid unhealthy habits - don't overload your life with unhealthy habits like bad food, smoking and drinking
• Me time - make time for yourself to relax and do the things you enjoy
• Help others - doing things outside of work like volunteering schemes to help others can be really rewarding
• Get enough rest - lack of sleep can be detrimental to stress

Work related stress is dealing with an excess of demands in the workplace that exceed your ability to cope. You can experience both the mental and physical effects of it.

There is no evidence to suggest that stress can directly cause heart disease or heart attacks. However, stress can increase things like heart rate and pressure so it could cause things like angina and it could affect already existing heart conditions.

While non-medical therapies are often advised before medical, there are medications that can be taken in relation to stress but there is not specifically one medication for stress. You might be offered:

• Sleeping pills if you are struggling sleeping due to stress
• Antidepressants if you are experiencing depression or anxiety with stress
• Medications that might treat symptoms of stress like high blood pressure.

• Meditation
• Take 5 minutes to focus on your breathing.
• Talk to friends/family whoever it might be to help you destress
• Me time. Take an evening a week to do something you love.
• Laughing therapies
• Music - some people like music to destress
• Pets - pet therapies have been found to reduce stress.
• Progressive muscle relaxation
• Gardening
• Aromatherapy

Fight or flight is the psychological response to how we respond to stressful situations. Your body releases hormones that prepare your body to either stay and deal with the situation or leave it. The saying derives from our ancestors about when they faced danger or threats in their environment and whether they would fight or flee, e.g. taking it back to prehistoric times, if a caveman was threatened by a predator, they would either fight and defend their home or flee for safety.

The chemical reaction of fight or flight works like this… the sympathetic nervous system stimulates the adrenal glands. This releases catecholamines including adrenaline and noradrenaline. An increase in heart rate, blood pressure and breathing then follows, prepping for fight or flight.

Anxiety is a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, and the symptoms range from mild to severe. Despite what many people may think, anxiety is perfectly natural and it’s experienced by all of us at some point in our lives - particularly before interviews, medical treatment, and significant life events. But some people experience frequent or severe anxiety, which affects their daily life.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, known as CBT, is a scientifically tested and verified talking therapy that’s very effective to use in general day-to-day life to improve and maintain good mental health. It’s a practical problem-solving approach to overcoming emotional problems and is goal-orientated.

As we said above, anxiety is perfectly natural and it’s experienced by all of us at some point in our lives, but some people experience frequent or severe anxiety which affects their daily life.

• In 2013, there were 8.2 million cases of diagnosed anxiety in the UK.
• In England women are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders as men.
• The one-week prevalence of generalised anxiety in England is 6.6%

(Mentalhealth.org)

In any given week in England, the following are experienced:

• Mixed anxiety and depression: 8 in 100 people
• Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD): 6 in 100 people

(Mind.org)

• 7.2% of 5-19 year olds experience an anxiety condition
• In 2017, 3.9% of 5-10 year old children had an anxiety disorder, as did 7.5% of 11-16 year olds and 13.1% of 17-19 year olds

(MHFA England)

Anxiety UK define GAD as “the feeling of being anxious about almost everything for no apparent reason. If you’re affected by GAD, you’ll often feel unduly worried about a wide variety of issues (such as health, money, work, school and relationships) rather than one specific problem.”