Taking A Step Today Will Help Lead You To A Better Tomorrow ~ A Blog About Mental Health By: Jennifer Kate

Well, I'm back, and again I'm switching it up. We will discuss mental health, and I will share my struggle with mental health and my multiple diagnoses. I feel like this is an idea I've wanted to write about for some time now.

Let's understand why discussing mental health is so important and why I feel it's overlooked. So first off, let's talk about what mental health is and how it can affect each person because each person can behave and react differently. In short, mental health is a person's psychological and emotional well-being. There are many mental health diagnoses in the world, and each comes with a unique set of challenges a person can face. However, as i stated earlier, each person is different and can be affected differently but symptoms and a diagnosis.

I will share my diagnoses with you guys, then explain in more detail what they are and how they affect my everyday life. So the first diagnosis is ADD or, in medical terms Attention Deficit Disorder, which, if you read the name, is focus disorder. Now, this diagnosis is more and more common in kids and adults. I got diagnosed pretty young. I think I was ten or eleven years old. Now let me get into more detail about ADD, its symptoms, and how it can affect my everyday life.

This is the definition of ADD: A chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. Here are some Symptoms: having a short attention span and being easily distracted, making careless mistakes, for example, in schoolwork, appearing forgetful or losing things, and being unable to stick to tasks that are tedious or time-consuming. Most of these symptoms I stated for you above are what affect my life regularly. It's hard to deal with sometimes, but it gets easier to control and keep under wraps as you age. Before I move on, I want to say there is medicine to help control this diagnosis, but I have chosen not to go that path for multiple reasons, which I will not go into detail about.

Let's talk about the following diagnosis I struggle with, and this one is also prevalent, and a lot of people struggle with it, and some people won't admit to it, but I feel like most people struggle with this in their ways. And this diagnosis is known as Anxiety, and I think it speaks for itself. It doesn't need much explanation. Anxiety can affect your whole life if you let it, and there are many ways to deal with it and get it under control. But I think the most challenging part of Anxiety is stress.

When I'm under a lot of pressure, I tend to get awful Anxiety and panic, and it's not a good situation. I can't speak for everyone, but Anxiety can sometimes be debilitating for some, and it's hard to cope. But anyways, let's move on to the most significant diagnosis I have that requires a lot more in-depth explanation, and again, it's also prevalent in many people these days.

Last but not least, let's talk about my most significant and newest diagnosis and how I am learning to cope with and deal with regularly, Depression. Now you see the word Depression, and for many of us, that word speaks for itself. Depression is very complicated and can have different effects on people, and each person can handle it differently. Let's talk about the different types of Depression. The first one is the Major Depression.

Major Depression is the most common type of Depression. Some symptoms of Major Depression are loss of interest or pleasure in your activities, weight loss or gain, trouble getting to sleep or feeling sleepy during the day, and being tired and without energy.

There are many more, but these are just a few symptoms. Let's talk about the following type of Depression: anxious distress, which is feeling tense and restless most days. You have trouble concentrating because you're worried something awful could happen. Then there is another type of Depression, but this title is if you've had Depression for longer than two years, and it's called a persistent depressive disorder. Some Symptoms include a change in appetite, sleeping too much or too little, lack of energy or fatigue, low self-esteem, trouble concentrating or making decisions, and hopelessness.

Now, my Depression feels like it comes in waves, and some days are good. Some days it's a struggle to want to get out of bed and do basic chores and stuff. On other days I'm high energy and ready for anything life throws at me. It's hard to go from high to low all the time. It mentally screws with my mental state, and it's hard to balance it, but as I stated in another blog which will be coming soon, I started mental health therapy. It's been helping me to talk about my issues and use that time to get the help that i need so i can be the best version of myself and not constantly be feeling down on myself and low on my luck. Some days I'm calm, cool, and collected; others, I'm on edge and snapping at everyone. It depends on the day; unfortunately, I blame that on my Depression.

There is one more quick mental health topic I want to touch on before I go ahead and wrap this blog up, and that topic is OCD cause I'm like 90 percent sure I have OCD even though I've never been diagnosed. I just have an odd feeling about it. For those who may not know what OCD stands for, it means Over Compulsive Disorder. OCD is a common, Chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, recurring thoughts, "obsessions," and behaviors, "compulsions" that they feel the urge to repeat repeatedly. I won't get into the symptoms because there are so many, but I have a tough time with scheduling, and when things constantly change, it makes me anxious, and I have a hard time when I don't have a schedule or routine.

Well, that wraps it up here. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this blog. I know this is a bit of a longer blog, but I hope this blog can help people who may be struggling or need someone to relate to because, in our ways, we all have things that we work with, and you don't need to feel alone. Well, that does it for me here. I'll catch you guys in the next one.