Staying healthy
During episodes of severe mental illness, people may also struggle to look after themselves and their health in the same way that they would when well.
This may include lifestyle factors and behaviours like
- eating patterns and diet
- not taking medication as prescribed (commonly through forgetting)
- trouble with sleeping
- increasing our use of alcohol, drugs, caffeine or nicotine
So the way we are feeling emotionally can have a direct impact on our health. Our mental well-being also has the ability to influence the way we act and react to situations; you may hear this referred to as coping mechanisms or strategies.
Coping strategies
In situations where we are feeling stressed out and emotional (angry, upset, scared) or during periods of experiencing mental health problems, people often develop ‘coping strategies’ – ways that we tend to deal with things.
Some people feel the need to tackle problems head-on; others may deny or be unable to recognise that there is even a problem.
Through these pressures and times of difficulty, there are a number of common behaviour patterns that people use to deal with how they are feeling, all of which in some way will influence our overall health.
Being aware of how you react to things can put you in a strong position to make changes or to seek help for those habits or tendencies that are having a negative effect on your health, and putting you at a higher health risk than you need to be.
It can be hard through difficult times or during mental illness to look at the way you are reacting in an objective and evaluative way. This type of evaluation is an important component of psychological behavioural therapies like CBT, which help you begin to evaluate your own way of responding to difficulties and in times of stress or illness, and the impact these have on you.
