About These Blogs

Welcome to "Beyond Mental Illness." This site was created to give advice to people who have a psychiatric history and now are working to re-build their lives. It is definitely possible for people with psychiatric histories to have meaningful lives with important contributions, and these pages are designed to give suggestions on how to do so.

There is minimal discussion of medication here. Medications can be an important step for some people, but they are only one step. Medications can help mitigate some symptoms, but they cannot do everything a person needs. The author hopes to give suggestions on filling other needs people with mental illness have.

Right now the blog has two composite characters. One is Tony, a young man who has recently been released from the hospital and is low-functioning. The letters addressed to Tony are here on this page.

The second character is Kayla, who has been stable for a while but needs advice on taking next steps and moving forward. The link to Kayla's letters is: beyondmikayla.blogspot.com.

The author recommends people interested in mental health consider reading the following books: http://beyondmentalillness.blogspot.com/p/recommended-reading-list.html.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Major Changes

Dear Tony,

I have learned more about dealing with drastic changes in mentality or lifestyle.

I react as though they are a physical illness. Often they can lead to physical illness - stress can weaken the immune system, they often involve changes in day-to-day functioning, etc. I have learned to treat them as wounds or illnesses.

How do we treat illnesses?

Usually the best way to treat illnesses is to slow down your daily life. Cut back on things that are not absolutely essential. Sleep as much as you can - the more you sleep, the faster you will heal. Illness and wounds sometimes need specific treatment (cough syrup, aspirin, specific creams for wounds). To treat a wound, you would probably cut back on your life but also give it some special treatment, specifically exposing it to fresh air or to rest. For a drastic change, you need to "expose the change." Think about it and let it in. Let it come in to your life.

Like physical problems, that takes time. Wounds and illnesses heal when they are ready to heal, not when you need them to. You cannot speed up the healing just by treating yourself more aggressively. You need to give your physical and mental health time to adjust to the change. It takes a while. But it can be done.