The month of May is national mental health awareness month, and it’s a good time to do a self check. This is your annual reminder, a public service announcement, if you will.
When my oldest son was 13 or 14 he developed an interest in knife throwing. One day he came in from the backyard with a bandana pulled up over his nose, just under his eyes, like a bank robbing bandit straight out of an old Western.
“Why are you wearing your bandana like that?” I asked. He mumbled something unintelligible in a tone I recognized as a deflection. “Take that off your face,” I said.
He reluctantly complied, exposing a deep gash right between his eyes across the bridge of his nose. He’d been throwing his homemade knives at the clothesline pole (something he’d been warned not to do) and one bounced back and clipped him in the nose. I insisted on a visit to the clinic for stitches. He’d been planning to hide the wound until it healed, rather than face mom-wrath for doing something he’d been told not to do. But keeping his injury a secret would have put him at risk of infection, scarring and additional pain.
And so it is with our mental health and wellness. We know when we’re struggling — whether it’s depression or anxiety or an inability to control our reactions or something more serious — but we’d rather hide it or attempt to treat ourselves at home than seek help and risk criticism, judgment, or that most feared word in all the English language: change.
Trying to manage the unmanageable by ourselves puts us at greater risk. Some mental health issues will not resolve without professional care, and they may get worse. Self-medicating, which sounds simple on the surface, is a risky venture. Treating symptoms is not the same as fixing the cause, and sometimes our chosen course of “treatment” causes more trouble in the long run than the original issue.
So this month, take a time out and check in with yourself. Are you always angry? Sad? Frantic? Panicky? Unable to get a handle on your racing thoughts? Not sleeping or sleeping too much? Eating more or less than normal? Turning to alcohol or other substances as a way to mitigate symptoms? Have friends or family expressed concern about your behavior?
There are plenty of online options for therapy and counseling available now, or talk to your family physician for a recommendation.
And for all of us, no matter our own current mental health status, let’s normalize talking about it, getting help when we need it, and supporting each other as we “do the work” to keep our minds and souls in good shape. We’ve lost enough people to undiagnosed and untreated mental illness already.
By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com
