Tag: mental disorder

Popular Psychology

Helping A Loved One Who Has A Mental Illness

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC4 Comments on Helping A Loved One Who Has A Mental Illness

womencare-support-groups_istock_000010775681The other day, a friend of mine asked me how she could help a friend of hers that was mentally ill.

She explained to me that her friend had bipolar disorder, something she had been suffering from for years and had a long history of self-injury and suicide attempts.

According to my friend, this person was currently in a deep depression and posting dark posts on Facebook including some alarming ones such as wanting to give away her pets (giving away possessions is often associated with suicidal thoughts).

She wanted to know what should she do or say to her to make her “feel better” and I told her that there was no magic word or act she could to that would just bring her out of her current mental state. It’s like trying to help a friend who has a serious medical condition. You can help alleviate the pain, maybe make them feel more comfortable, but there is nothing you can actually do that will just cure the person of the condition.

Many people think they can or should be able to, and thus get very frustrated with themselves and/or the person they are trying to help when the reality hits that it’s just not that simple. The best thing you can do, and what I told my friend to do is to be a support system for her friend and show her love. Let her see that she has a friend who is going to stand by her side no matter what.

People suffering from a mental illness often feel broken, unlovable and fear that people will abandon them if they can’t keep it together. The best gift you can give them is showing support and love. There are no magic words or acts, but you may be surprised how a simple walk around the park talking about nothing in particular or just being present with that person, can have huge positive effects.

Many people who want to help someone they love who has a mental illness often don’t do that because as simple as it sounds, it can actually be quite difficult to actually sit with and be present with someone instead of lecturing, ordering and dictating to them what they should or need to be doing. That’s why actually just being with them, showing love and support can be such a precious gift.

Also, you may need your own support system to help yourself while helping someone you love and that’s okay.  There are many support groups tailored towards supporting loved ones of people with various illnesses including mental illnesses.

You may also need to make appropriate boundaries so that you don’t become overwhelmed and exhausted. Don’ try to be a superhero, you are only one person so do what you can when you can, but don’t feel obligated to do everything.

However you choose to support your loved one who has a mental illness is a blessing. They may not be able to tell you that or appreciate it right away. Your support doesn’t have to be perfect in order to be effective  You are doing what few people do, which is showing support and love instead of ignoring or stigmatizing.

Some Tips

  1. Learn about their illness. It’s easier to help and support someone with any illness when you have some information and insight about what they are going through. My friend who wants to support her friend with bipolar disorder actually had no working knowledge of the disorder.
  2. Let them know that they are not broken or defective and that they are the same person they have always been, they are just suffering from an illness, but they are NOT their illness.
  3. Help them if you can to get to their appointments, make sure they are taking their medications and actually talking to their doctors and/or other mental health professionals. That help can come from driving them to their appointments to simply reminding them to take their medication or to go to their appointments.
  4. Show and tell them that you love them and that you are there for them through thick and thin.
  5. Ask them what they need. Don’t just assume. The person who is sick generally knows what is best for them. They may need you to help clean the house or bring them dinner if they are too sick to do so.
  6. Check in with them, make sure that they are okay and following their treatment plan. This not only helps keep them accountable and responsible, but it also serves as a reminder that they have someone who cares about them
Popular Psychology, The Perplexed Minds of Teenagers

Disordered Eating And Body Image Issues In Teenage Girls: Part 1

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments on Disordered Eating And Body Image Issues In Teenage Girls: Part 1

6a00d8341bf67c53ef014e8c0ffaab970d-800wi (1)Working in a high school with teenage girls, I come across teenage girls with body image issues regularly.

Take for instance, one of my 15 year old clients who is so convinced that she is fat that when I first met her she was only drinking water mixed with apple cider vinegar for breakfast and lunch.

For dinner she would have a very small meal. She was not overweight, but due to teasing about her “putting on some weight” by both her mom and peers, she see’s herself as fat and ugly.

Because of all this, her self-esteem is shot and it’s taken weekly individual therapy sessions and weekly support group sessions to get her to at least start eating a light breakfast and lunch, although she is still struggling with body image and self-esteem issues.

Society Creates Body Image Issues In Girls

Unlike boys, teenage girls are put under immense pressure to be beautiful, thin and feminine in most Western industrialized countries. However, biological changes and weight gain are natural parts of pubertal development.

Like the client I was talking about above, her weight gain seems to be more of a womanly weight gain. She seems to be filling out and taken on the body of a woman, compared to that of a prepubescent child. This natural weight gain that most girls experience during puberty, goes against our cultural’s  view of what being beautiful is, which for women includes extreme thinness.

These are conflicting messages for preteen and teenage girls.

On one hand, they are naturally developing and putting on weight, while on the other hand, they are getting messages from society that says their weight gain is unattractive.

Female identity in one part is defined in relational terms, society says they are supposed to be interpersonal and care about other peoples needs, feelings and interests which makes them more vulnerable than males to other people’s behaviors towards and opinions of them.

Another major part of female identity is beauty. In our culture, physical attractiveness contributes a lot to interpersonal success, which is one of the main reasons females strive to be beautiful, to assure popularity and respect.

Also, physically attractive girls are typically seen as more feminine compared to less attractive girls or girls who challenge our cultures traditional views on femininity through their political views such as feminist, or through their sexual orientation, such as lesbians.

Girls tell our society that they are feminine by being concerned with her looks and trying to achieve our culture’s ideal of beauty.

Because our culture demands that girls care about other people’s opinions and that they are defined by their physical appearance,  which society says includes being very thin, there’s no wonder girls are motivated to pursue thinness, at times by any means necessary including starving themselves to death.

Combine these issues with the natural weight gain of puberty and there’s no wonder many teenage girls develop body image issues.

Many teenage girls I’ve worked with who are physically perfect, not even slightly overweight, some were even underweight,  suffer from intense body image dissatisfaction.

A girl I’ve been working with since last year was naturally thin, yet wanted to be thinner so bad that she starved herself to the point of needing to be hospitalized. Like many of the girls I work with who have body image issues, her pursuit for thinness and beauty was so consuming that almost every other aspect of her life, including her education, goals and future took a back seat.

Eating Disorders

Not all girls with body image issues go on to develop an eating disorder like the young girl I just mentioned above, but many of them will.

Eating disorders are a major concern when it comes to the health of teenage girls with an estimated 1% to 3% likely to meet diagnostic criteria for either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa is when someone refuses to maintain a minimal average body weight and has body image disturbances such as feeling fat even when they are very thin, and in females who are menstruating, they may experience amenorrhea if their body weight is low enough.

Bulimia nervosa typically includes periods of binge eating, followed by drastic methods to compensate for the binge eating including excessive exercising, fasting, vomiting, using laxatives, etc., accompanied with body image disturbance such as thinking one is much more overweight or unattractive than they really are.

Besides these two eating disorders, there are some girls who have other patterns of eating that fall under disordered eating, such as laxative abuse, vomiting after eating some meals, extreme calorie restriction, and binge eating.

Eating disorders typically begin in early adolescence with much of it’s symptoms typically evident by the late teen years.

While not all girls with body image issues develop full blown eating disorders, there is little research into why some girls do and others don’t develop an eating disorder.

During part 2 we will look at some of the risk and protective factors for young girls to develop an eating disorder.