It’s Okay not to be Okay

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well-being. So, if you’re feeling a little down under the weather once in a blue moon, what is it that you do to cope up with that? It is perfectly normal to be feeling a little down under once in a while. What matters is that we strategise and battle it efficiently so it doesn’t affect our day to day activities. After all, mind over matter right?

Certain changes in our life we go through, alter our mental health as well. They can be major or minor things. It affects different people in different ways. Just think of a significant life change you have encountered. It can be moving to a new house, break up of a relationship, loss of a beloved person in your life, or changing your school/entering a new university. These events bring a change to our monotonous lifestyle. Whilst some people handle it extremely well, others tend to fall apart. In psychiatry, we call it an ‘adjustment disorder’

Adjustment disorders are usually transient, arising one month from the onset of the change and usually do not exceed for more than six months. Features of adjustment disorders include low mood, anxiety, feeling of inability to cope, problems in planning ahead, and even rarely aggression and violence can be a feature. It means if you’ve been through a significant life change, it is normal for you to be having these symptoms! And the great thing about this is, you can pull yourself through!

Now when people go through a stressful event in their life and have trouble coping up with that grief, they are very quick to label it as ‘depression’. However, that is not the case all the time. Clinical depression includes certain physical and emotional symptoms such as changes in sleep patterns, appetite, energy, ones which you do not find in adjustment disorder. Depressive symptoms are more intense and severe. While it is important to identify these changes it is also important not to overdiagnose this as a severe mental illness.

So how can you help yourself when you undergo certain life changes? The first thing to do is to identify that you are going through a change in your life and for you to have a