Mental health is an epidemic issue, and one which affects one in four of us each year. Local health services are stretched against a growing influx of patients with chronic mental health conditions, from depression and anxiety to complex chronic disorders. Mental health issues can spring from a variety of places, including as a result of physical injury – but how? And how can they be managed appropriately?
Mental Health and Physical Recovery
If you have been lucky enough not to experience a chronic mental health condition, you would be forgiven for not giving mental health and its impacts much thought with regard to your personal life. However, acute mental health conditions can arise as a by-product of unexpected events, particularly personal injuries.
Indeed, mental health and recovery from a physical ailment are inexorably linked. The frustrations of a slow recovery process, the mourning of a level of physical ability you once possessed, and the difficulties inherent to navigating life as an injured or disabled person – all of the above can be intensely impactful, leading to the onset of depression or generalised anxiety disorder.
Head and Brain Injuries
Mental health challenges are significantly compounded when the physical injury in question is a brain or head injury. For one, primary symptoms can be neurological in nature, with severe head injuries commonly leading to issues with any number of faculties – from motor skills to behaviour and even personality.
Where a brain injury has permanently or overwhelmingly impacted your ability to live as you were, brain injury experts could be a great help in winning you compensation. This money could be transformative in ensuring you receive the complex and multifaceted support you need to not only rehabilitate yourself, but also tackle the secondary mental health impacts that come with managing a brain injury.
Managing Mental Health
Physical recovery is often well-structured, guided as it is by NHS-mandated physiotherapy or rehabilitation sessions. Mental health is less simple to manage, and most certainly shouldn’t be managed alone. Friends and family are crucial as a support network for your recovery, to ensure you do not lead yourself to darker thoughts or actions; mental health exercises in the form of mindfulness and meditation can also be extremely helpful to the recovery process at large.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, there is the matter of seeking external professional help. Mental health issues are not to be tackled alone, but even pastoral help from your close friends and family can fall short of the mark in certain circumstances. In the UK, mental health support is unfortunately underfunded and oversubscribed; still, though, it has been made especially easy for you to self-refer to mental health services in the UK, while mental health support charities exist to help sufferers get back on their feet.
Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash
