You sometimes wonder, don't you? How am I doing with my mental health? A mental
health evaluation in 10 minutes today at Live On Purpose TV.
Most of the people
who are searching for a mental health evaluation on YouTube are looking for a
how-to video because they're a mental health professional or they're a student
who's studying something related to the mental health industry, that's not what
this video is for. This one is for you because you might be wondering sometimes,
am I okay? Am I alright here? Is there something going on in my mental
health that I should be aware of? Okay, first of all, it's normal to wonder that
you're probably not as crazy as you feel, that's a good general rule of thumb
however, there are some things you might want to be aware of and if I were
training a graduate student for example or I remember back in my clinical
training going through a process of evaluating someone's mental health and
there's a few different areas that you can look at that will help you to get a
little bit of a sense of where you are. The first one is mood. Now when we're
talking mood, that's typically how you feel. Most people experience this as
either happiness or sadness or elation or depression.
Now the word depression in the mental health industry is a diagnosis but it's
also a description of mood, okay. You might ask yourself when I think about my
mood, do I experience mood swings? And what this is, do I experience mood swings
for example, mood swings are when I'm really up and then I'm really down and
then I'm really up and then I'm really down, that's important to pay attention
to. Now a certain level of mood swing-iness is normal but
this is getting severe or if you find yourself missing out on certain
activities or things that you would normally do like your work or your
family commitments, if it starts to interfere with something then we would
say okay, this is getting into the area of a mood disturbance. Sometimes mood
disturbances can turn into mood disorders. Now little clarification here,
we're not having this conversation for the purpose of diagnosing you, okay,
that's not what this is about, it's simply for educational purposes for you
to get a little bit of a sense of how you might evaluate yourself so that
you'll know if you need to get a little more help so that's why I want you to
look at it. In the mood area still, do I experienced significant or prolonged
periods of depressed mood for no particular reason? Now sometimes you'll
feel depressed and you know why, maybe you just went through a really
stressful experience, maybe you lost someone who is a beloved person to you,
maybe you were fired from your job, it's normal to feel those things after
something like that occurs so that's not we're talking about, we're talking about
a prolonged period of depressed mood that seems to just hang in there and you
lose interest in things that you would normally do and there's no particular
reason for it, that's another thing that we want to watch out for and if you're
noticing that, it might be an indicator that there's something you want to look
a little deeper into. Now another aspect of mood is anxiety, anxiety typically
people experience that as nervousness or fear or apprehension or being worried.
Now the word worried implies that it's part of a normal human experience, we're
talking about a level of anxiety or worry or fear or apprehensiveness
that is greater than what you would normally expect or that what you
normally are used to, you want to watch out for that especially if it's good
in your way, if it's causing you to avoid certain activities or if it takes you
out of the things that you would normally do in your work and in your
family interactions, okay. So all of the things that I'm sharing with you are
normal human experiences to become a concern in terms of a mental health
evaluation, it needs to be prolonged or interfering with your regular
functioning or be more severe than you would normally expect, okay, and it's hard
to judge that sometimes because all you know is what your own experience is but
this will give you a sense I think. Okay, another area that we sometimes look at
in a mental health evaluation is physical symptoms. It's so interesting
how our mind and body are connected and when some things are going on in your
mind sometimes that can manifest as physical symptoms, the most common ones
that we look for in a mental health assessment tend to be headaches or
fatigue or stomachaches, these things tend to show up a little more readily
when we are stressed. When we are stressed, our brain triggers the release
of certain chemicals into our body into the bloodstream of our body that can
sometimes cause these kinds of symptoms to emerge without any other particular
explanation for why those symptoms are troubling you so if you're having
constant recurring physical symptoms that are not explained by some other
mental medical condition, it may be a connection to mental health so just be
aware of that, be sensitive to it. Another really common factor in mental health
has to do with our reaction to or our response to trauma and trauma is most
correctly defined as a very intense experience where you either
experience or directly witness something that is dangerous or life-threatening or
sometimes tragic or destructive, okay. So people who witness a
car accident for example especially one where there are injuries are that counts
as a trauma, someone who is abused or mistreated by another person, that counts
as a trauma and you can see as I say that there are all different levels of
this. People who go to war often experience a traumatic reaction to what
they're witnessing in the war situation so you get a feeling for where
I'm going with this. Now if you have experienced a trauma and if you have
recurrent and intrusive thoughts and feelings related to that, it's normal to
react to those things. I tell my clients sometimes that you're having a normal
reaction to an abnormal event but what we want to watch out for is something
that persists over time especially if you're making efforts to talk about it
and deal with it in productive ways and it's still interferes with your
concentration or your sleep or your relationships then that's something we
want to pay attention to as well. Now let's go a little different direction,
how about your thoughts? The thoughts are really interesting. Can you control what
you think? Hmm, you think you can? Try this, think about bananas. How you doing? Yeah,
it's not too hard, right? You can think of the size, color, shape, taste, texture of
bananas. It's not that hard to go bananas. Sorry, that was bad. Anyway,
now for a few moments, do not think about grapefruit. Duh, don't think about
grapefruit. You're thinking about grapefruit, aren't you? Those round ones
that are sour and they're squirting out when you stick your spoon in them. Can
you control your thoughts? Well, yes and no. Thoughts sometimes just come in from
nowhere so we're going to look at that realm of thoughts a little bit. Are my
thoughts generally positive or do I tend toward
more negative dark thoughts? If you find yourself for example thinking
persistently about hurting yourself or about suicide or other dark or
destructive themes, that may be an indicator that we've got some mental
health issues going on, okay, and without being ashamed of that, just acknowledge
oh yeah, my thoughts tend to go that direction. There's things we can do about
that but just notice it, okay. Notice also whether your thoughts tend to be
pressured or create anxiety for you or are disjointed from what other people
seem to be thinking. You don't always know what other people are thinking but
if your thoughts as you express them seem to be way out in left field then
maybe we ought to take a look at this, that's just another area in a mental
health assessment, we're going to look at the thoughts. There's other areas but I
think I've given you a pretty good overview, there's one more that I think
that deserves mentioning and it's because it's such a common place where
we run into problems with our own mental health and that has to do with
substances. Do you find for example that you turn to things like alcohol or
caffeine or tobacco or any of the variety of other substances that are out
there, some legal, some not as a strategy for handling stress for example or for
recreational purposes or to escape from the responsibilities that you might be
feeling in other aspects of your life. Most people who go into treatment for a
substance abuse problem don't think it's as big of a problem as people around
them think that it is. I'm inviting you to just be really honest with yourself,
okay. Take a look at it, what is your actual use and are you using these
substances in a way that is intend to basically self medicate for some kind
of a mental health issue typically depression or stress or anxiety?
If you'll be honest with yourself about that, there are all kinds of things that
you can do to address it so I've given you the main areas that we would cover
as professionals, we want to know about these areas in a mental health
assessment. If you can be honest with yourself and take a look at it, it might
lead you in the right direction to take the appropriate steps to help
yourself. Okay, all of that wasn't to diagnose you
but hopefully you've got some ideas on things you might want to follow up on
and if you know someone else who would really benefit, please share this episode
with them.