When do I look for mental health services?
For some people, seeking mental health services is not as easy as seeking medical attention. Unlike physical injuries, aches and pain, bleeding or flu symptoms, which are visual or felt, it is very challenging to decide whether one needs psychological intervention.
As everyone’s life development and experiences differ, not one model fits all. Here are some suggested considerations when deciding whether to seek a psychological consultation.
- Feedback from others on patterns or themes related to:
a.Emotions: Getting easily agitated, irate or anxious from external cues such as words or tones
b. Beliefs: Blaming or shaming oneself, black or white (all or nothing) thinking, believing self as helpless victim
c. Actions: Repetitive/compulsive/addictive acts such as washing, checking, use/abuse of illicit drugs or prescribed medications, gambling, unhealthy gaming to escape reality, or impulsive/compulsive spending, prolong delays at starting important tasks
d. Physiological: feeling trapped/frozen or gripped with fear, or having anxiety symptoms such as heart palpitations and abdominal discomfort not due to other biological reasons - Unexplainable medical syndromes for which medical specialists are unable to identify the source or diagnose. One good example is sudden acute pain, or chronic pain. Another type of pain is phantom limb pain after amputation or being involved in a severely traumatic event.
- Experiencing disturbing events during childhood and teenage years, collectively known as Adverse Childhood Events. These include but not limited to receiving harsh scoldings, shaming or humiliation, witnessing violence at home between household members, loss of very close friends, family or important people/pets due to death, divorce or physical separation, bullying or peer isolation. Research has repeatedly found that significantly disturbing events during childhood and teenage years cause a major disruption in healthy brain development, resulting in psycho-emotional instability at a young age. Such events can continue to haunt victims through the trajectory of life, manifesting through visual/auditory hallucinations, relationship difficulties, emotional roller-coasting, lifestyle of thrill, etc.
- Having no direction in life or a sense of emptiness, meaninglessness or hopelessness. This may be due to sudden losses of family members, a profession, or accumulated through long period of time.
- Experiencing burnout due to work or as caregiver, overwhelmed with physical and emotional lethargy
- Repeated exposure to death, injuries or illnesses. Those who commonly experience this are medical professionals and frontline responders such as firefighters, paramedics, police and other law enforcers. Prolonged repeated exposure results in vicarious or secondary trauma. Any other individuals who had been involved indirectly with an accident such witnesses or acquaintances of victims can also suffer from secondary trauma.
- Direct involvement in a major incident or accident that resulted in death or serious injuries to others and/or self. This includes being sexually or physically assaulted and vivid re-experiencing or reliving of the event.
- Feeling unusually emotionally flat, down, high or roller-coasting for prolonged periods with or without any reason.
- Difficulty relating to others or relationships always seeming to fall flat
- Repeating unhelpful and sometimes harmful acts and choices of words that one’s own parents used on you.
The first objective in seeking professional psychological consultation is to understand what is going on beneath the surface. Thereafter, you may decide the next course of action together with the counsellor or psychologist. At times, the practitioner may guide the understanding but unable to provide the necessary intervention, and the practitioner will then refer you to another specialists. If the practitioner is able and willing to provide intervention, it is important to work out realistic outcomes as many require longer periods of regular sessions to experience the change.
Counselling and psychotherapy which seeks to resolve the core issues, rather than simply patching over the symptoms which can later resurface, takes time and is a journey which requires perseverance and patience.
