Behavioral & Mental Health

To get past a dif­fi­cult emo­tion, you need to first iden­ti­fy and embrace that emo­tion. Once you know what you are feel­ing and why, you are able to move into a state of mind that allows for more effec­tive prob­lem solv­ing and deci­sion mak­ing. When some­one tells you to calm down, they are basi­cal­ly sug­gest­ing that you skip right past this step and move imme­di­ate­ly to the prob­lem solv­ing state of mind. That’s just not how we work. We need that in-between step of iden­ti­fy­ing the tough feel­ing and sit­ting with it for a minute before we can move for­ward. What’s miss­ing when some­one says ​“calm down” is empa­thy.

In our con­tin­u­ous effort to pri­or­i­tize men­tal well-being and inclu­siv­i­ty, we join the nation in com­mem­o­rat­ing Minor­i­ty Men­tal Health Month. This ded­i­cat­ed obser­vance brings atten­tion to the unique strug­gles that racial and eth­nic minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties face regard­ing men­tal illness.

Research shows that for emo­tion­al symp­toms, includ­ing depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and ADHD, a com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tion and ther­a­py is often the best form of treat­ment. But when should you or your child try med­ica­tion? Are there oth­er things you should try first? How does any­one even make that deci­sion? Is there a pill for that? The fol­low­ing is a list of fac­tors to keep in mind as you nav­i­gate this poten­tial­ly over­whelm­ing decision.

Focus­ing on your men­tal health is impor­tant for all ages. Your needs may vary depend­ing on the stage of life you’re in. As we come to the end of Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month, our QMG Behav­ioral Health team shares some tips for old­er adults.

Through­out Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month, our Behav­ioral Health team is shar­ing tips to help sup­port your men­tal health. Men­tal health is the result of the steps you take and the choic­es you make every day. Here are some tips to help you take the steps and make the choic­es that are best for your emo­tion­al wellbeing.

Among the media cov­er­age about the Uvalde tragedy are arti­cles about how the Uvalde com­mu­ni­ty will start to recov­er. Men­tal health experts across the nation are being called on for their exper­tise to help peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren, process and under­stand how to cope with such a safe­ty-shat­ter­ing experience.

If you’ve tried to sched­ule an appoint­ment with a ther­a­pist late­ly, you may have been dis­ap­point­ed to learn that instead of set­ting up an appoint­ment, you were added to a wait­list. Or maybe you were added to a wait­list sev­er­al weeks ago and still haven’t heard back about sched­ul­ing an appoint­ment. What’s the deal!?!

Ever since March 2020 (what huge, life-chang­ing thing hap­pened that month?!), health­care work­ers have made the switch to offer­ing more tele­health options for patients. There are all kinds of video call ser­vices (Zoom, Skype, Face­time, etc.) and tra­di­tion­al phone call options to choose from.

In a recent doc­u­men­tary series titled, The Me You Can’t See, Oprah Win­frey shared the sto­ries of peo­ple who strug­gle with their men­tal health. One of the sto­ries she shares is that of Prince Har­ry who speaks about a form of ther­a­py called EMDR (Eye Move­ment Desen­si­ti­za­tion and Reprocessing).

If you want bet­ter men­tal health, there’s no need to com­plete­ly over­haul your life. Well­ness results from tak­ing small steps and main­tain­ing them over time. Since the change has to start some­where, I’d like to chal­lenge you to try sev­en new things, one each day next week, toward improv­ing your men­tal health.