MedLink of NC

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

admin38 — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 17:13:42 +0000

MedAssist offers Mobile Free Pharmacy

Article supplied by: NC MedAssist

The Mobile Free Pharmacy provides adults and children who are low-income and in need with free over the counter medicine. Medicine such as aspirin, children’s cough syrup, allergy medicine and vitamins are just a few items given to families who need assistance.

Most events now have pre-ordering available online. However, NC MedAssist and affiliated Mobile Free Pharmacy sponsors reserve the right to limit online orders for each event, so please order early. Once online ordering is closed, individuals can still come to the event to receive pre-made bags.

To request specific medications beforehand, visit www.medassist.org/mobile.

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

admin38 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:12:28 +0000

First families graduate from AGJ

Article supplied by: NC MedAssist CAre ring

First families graduate from AGJ

A Guided Journey (AGJ) recently celebrated its first graduation for the families in the program, with a cute jungle theme. There were 36 families who completed the program and 10 families and their guests who joined us for the celebration.

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

admin38 — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 17:32:10 +0000

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

Article supplied by: The C.W. Williams Community Health Center, Inc.

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in the world.

There are nine various types of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). They include Type 16, 18, 6, 11, 31, 33, 52, 59, and 45.

Of these nine, the HPV types 16 and 18 are responsible for about 80% of cervical cancer cases. Types 6 and 11, on the other hand, significantly cause genital warts more than the rest of the other types.

HPV infections are passed on through skin-to-skin contact — coming in contact with a cut on the skin or close genital contact with an infected person.

Also, there are three different types of HPV vaccine. The most popular and effective HPV vaccine is known as the Gardasil 9. This vaccine helps vaccinate the human body against intrusion from all nine HPV types.

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

Behavioral Health vs Mental Health

admin38 — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 15:34:21 +0000

Behavioral Health vs Mental Health

For every 10 people in a doctor’s office, seven are there seeking care for reasons related to behavioral health. These issues can include depression, anxiety, diabetes management, weight loss, smoking cessation and drinking or drug use problems. This has led a growing number of healthcare providers to offer integrated behavioral health and primary care to their patients.

But what is behavioral health? Some people use the terms “behavioral health” and “mental health” interchangeably. However, there are important differences.

Defining Behavioral Health

Behavioral health describes the connection between behaviors and the health and well-being of the body, mind and spirit. This would include how behaviors like eating habits, drinking or exercising impact physical or mental health.

However, during the 1970s and 1980s, behavioral health “almost entirely referred to behaviors that prevent illness or that promote health,” says the MEHAF. Later, the term began to include behaviors that help people manage disease. Most recently, behavioral health incorporated mental health.

Other definitions for behavioral health illustrate how wide-reaching the term is.

As a discipline, behavioral health refers to mental health, psychiatric, marriage and family counseling and addictions treatment, and it includes services provided by social workers, counselors, psychiatrists, neurologists and physicians. Behavioral health also includes both mental health and substance use, encompassing a continuum of prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery support services.

Behavioral Health vs Mental Health

When distinguishing between behavioral health and mental health, it is important to remember that behavioral health is a blanket term that includes mental health. Behavioral health looks at how behaviors impact someone’s health — physical and mental.

This results in a noticeable difference between behavioral health and mental health. For instance, a behavioral health professional might look at behaviors that may have contributed to a person’s obesity. This is an issue that primarily affects someone’s physical health. Some behavioral health topics and issues do not fall into the category of mental health.

On the other hand, mental health is included in behavioral health. As a result, people who have mental health issues can benefit from behavioral health principles. Sometimes, changes in behaviors by the individual, family or even the community and changes in thinking patterns can help people better cope with their mental health conditions.

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

Recognizing Adolescent Depression

admin38 — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 14:20:35 +0000

Recognizing Adolescent Depression

Adolescent depression is increasing at an alarming rate. Recent surveys indicate that as many as one in five teens suffers from clinical depression. This is a serious problem that calls for prompt, appropriate treatment. Depression can take several forms, including bipolar disorder (formally called manic-depression), which is a condition that alternates between periods of euphoria and depression.

Depression can be difficult to diagnose in teens because adults may expect teens to act moody. Also, adolescents do not always understand or express their feelings very well. They may not be aware of the symptoms of depression and may not seek help.

These symptoms may indicate depression, particularly when they last for more than two weeks:

Poor performance in school
Withdrawal from friends and activities
Sadness and hopelessness
Lack of enthusiasm, energy or motivation
Anger and rage
Overreaction to criticism
Feelings of being unable to satisfy ideals
Poor self-esteem or guilt
Indecision, lack of concentration or forgetfulness
Restlessness and agitation
Changes in eating or sleeping patterns
Substance abuse
Problems with authority
Suicidal thoughts or actions

A quick, easy and confidential way to determine if you may be experiencing depression is to take a mental health screening. A screening is not a diagnosis, but a way of understanding if your symptoms are having enough of an impact that you should seek help from a doctor or other professional. Visit www.mhascreening.org to take a depression screening.

Teens may experiment with drugs or alcohol or become sexually promiscuous to avoid feelings of depression. Teens also may express their depression through hostile, aggressive, risk-taking behavior. But such behaviors only lead to new problems, deeper levels of depression and destroyed relationships with friends, family, law enforcement or school officials.

Mental disorders affect nearly 20 percent of American adults; nearly 4 percent are severely impaired and classified as having serious mental illness. These disorders are often associated with chronic physical illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. They also increase the risk of physical injury and death through accidents, violence, and suicide.

Suicide alone was responsible for 42,773 deaths in the United States in 2014 (the last year for which final data are available), making it the 10th leading cause of death. Among adolescents and young adults, suicide is responsible for more deaths than the combination of cancer, heart disease, congenital anomalies, respiratory disease, influenza, pneumonia, stroke, meningitis, septicemia, HIV, diabetes, anemia, and kidney and liver disease.

The treatment of mental illness has long been held back by the sense that disorders of emotion, thinking, and behavior somehow lack legitimacy and instead reflect individual weakness or poor life choices. Not surprisingly, there has been a mismatch between the enormous impact of mental illness and addiction on the public’s health and our society’s limited commitment to addressing these problems. Here are three examples of how that plays out:

Most emergency departments are ill-equipped to meet the needs of patients in the midst of mental health crises.
Most insurance plans view mental illness and addiction as exceptions to standard care, not part of it.
Despite an overall cultural shift towards compassion, our society still tends to view the mentally ill and those with addiction as morally broken rather than as ill.

Why the disconnect? Psychiatry has been hampered by an inability to observe and record the physical workings of the brain. Because of that, psychiatric assessments and treatments have been viewed as somewhat mysterious. Even today, the underlying mechanisms behind some of the most powerful and effective psychiatric treatments are still poorly understood. All of that translates into the difficulty that many people have finding help for real, disabling symptoms attributed to a mental illness or addiction.

However, just as other fields of medicine have evolved as knowledge advanced during the past century, psychiatry has also made profound gains. Advances emerging from unlocking the brain’s physiology and biochemistry are coming at a time when mental health care is being integrated into traditional health care. The potential has never been greater to finally bring psychiatry quite literally under the same roof as the rest of medicine.Today, the hospital can address mental health issues as effectively as it treats trauma or cardiac arrest. This shift is occurring nationally, with community-involved, comprehensive mental health integration into hospitals in cities and rural communities alike.

Will the stigma of mental illness finally fade? Better understanding of the human brain and the biological nature of the mind will help, but it won’t be enough. How we think about mental health matters. When mental health is ultimately recognized as essential to physical health, not an extraneous element of it, then we will have access to true, complete, modern medicine.

John V. Campo, MD, is professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

Black And African American Communities And Mental Health

admin38 — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 15:39:47 +0000

Black And African American Communities And Mental Health

Overall, mental health conditions occur in Black and African American (B/AA) people in America at about the same or less frequency than in White Americans. However, the historical Black and African American experience in America has and continues to be characterized by trauma and violence more often than for their White counterparts and impacts emotional and mental health of both youth and adults.

Historical dehumanization, oppression, and violence against Black and African American people has evolved into present day racism – structural, institutional, and individual – and cultivates a uniquely mistrustful and less affluent community experience, characterized by a myriad of disparities including inadequate access to and delivery of care in the health system. Processing and dealing with layers of individual trauma on top of new mass traumas from COVID-19 (uncertainty, isolation, grief from financial or human losses), police brutality and its fetishization in news media, and divisive political rhetoric adds compounding layers of complexity for individuals to responsibly manage.

Help-seeking behavior is affected by mistrust of the medical system and often begins with faith-based outreach. However, MHA screening data shows that Black and African American people who screen positive for depression self-identify as planning to seek help at higher rates than the general population says they will seek help. Unfortunately, Black and African American providers, who are known to give more appropriate and effective care to Black and African American help-seekers, make up a very small portion of the behavioral health provider workforce (see treatment statistics below). Because of these factors and more, Black and African American people are more likely to experience chronic and persistent, rather than episodic, mental health conditions. Yet, hope for recovery should remain, as light is shed on these issues – and the general public holds accountable policymakers and health systems to evolve better systems which eliminate inequities in mental health services.

Demographics/Societal Issues

13.4 percent of the U.S. population, or nearly 46 million people, identify themselves as Black or African American and another 2.7 percent identified as multiracial. [1]
According to the most recent Census data available, 55 percent of all Black and African American people lived in the South, 18 percent lived in the Midwest, 17 percent in the Northeast, and 10 percent in the West. [2]
The Black immigrant population in the U.S. increased from 816,000 in 1980 to over 4.2 million by 2016. Thirty-nine percent were from Africa and nearly half were from the Caribbean. [3]
Overall, 24 percent of Black and African American people have a bachelor’s degree or higher as of 2017. [3]
More than 1 in 5 Black and African American people in the U.S. lived in poverty as of 2018. [4]
Women are the heads of household in roughly 30 percent of Black and African American homes, compared to 9 percent of white homes. [5]
Historical adversity, which includes slavery, sharecropping, and race-based exclusion from health, educational, social, and economic resources, translates into socioeconomic disparities experienced by Black and African American people today. Socioeconomic status, in turn, is linked to mental health: people who are impoverished, homeless, incarcerated, or have substance use problems are at higher risk for poor mental health.
Despite progress made over the years, racism continues to have an impact on the mental health of Black and African American people. Negative stereotypes and attitudes of rejection have decreased, but continue to occur with measurable, adverse consequences. Historical and contemporary instances of negative treatment have led to a mistrust of authorities, many of whom are not seen as having the best interests of Black and African Americans in mind.

Prevalence

Black and African American people living below poverty are twice as likely to report serious psychological distress than those living over 2x the poverty level. [6]
Adult Blacks and African Americans are more likely to have feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness than adult whites. [7]
Blacks and African Americans are less likely than white people to die from suicide at all ages. [8] However, Black and African American teenagers are more likely to attempt suicide than White teenagers (9.8 percent v. 6.1 percent). [9]

According to SAMHSA’s 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health [10]:

Sixteen percent (4.8 million) of Black and African American people reported having a mental illness, and 22.4 percent of those (1.1 million people) reported a serious mental illness over the past year.
Serious mental illness (SMI) rose among all ages of Black and African American people between 2008 and 2018.
Despite rates being less than the overall U.S. population, major depressive episodes increased from 9 percent-10.3 percent in Black and African American youth ages 12-17, 6.1 percent to 9.4 percent in young adults 18-25, and 5.7 percent to 6.3 percent in the 26-49 age range between 2015 and 2018.
Suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts are also rising among Black and African American young adults. While still lower than the overall U.S. population aged 18-25, 9.5 percent (439,000) of Black and African American 18-25-year-olds had serious thoughts of suicide in 2018, compared to 6 percent (277,000) in 2008. 3.6 percent (166,000) made a plan in 2018, compared to 2.1 percent (96,000) in 2008, and 2.4 percent (111,000) made an attempt in 2018, compared to 1.5 percent (70,000) in 2008.
Binge drinking, smoking (cigarettes and marijuana), illicit drug use and prescription pain reliever misuse are more frequent among Black and African American adults with mental illnesses.

Attitudes

According to a study conducted by Ward, Wiltshire, Detry, and Brown in 2013 [11]:

Black and African American hold beliefs related to stigma, psychological openness, and help-seeking, which in turn affects their coping behaviors. The participants in this study were not very open to acknowledging psychological problems, but they were somewhat open to seek mental health services.
Thirty percent of participants reported having a mental illness or receiving treatment for a mental illness
Black and African American men are particularly concerned about stigma.
Cohort effects, exposure to mental illness, and increased knowledge of mental illness are factors that could potentially change beliefs about symptoms of mental illness.
Participants appeared apprehensive about seeking professional help for mental health issues, which is consistent with previous research. However, participants were willing to seek out some form of help.

Treatment Issues

Black and African American people are more often diagnosed with schizophrenia and less often diagnosed with mood disorders compared to white people with the same symptoms. Additionally, they are offered medication or therapy at the lower rates than the general population. [5]
Black and African American people are over-represented in our jails and prisons. Black and African American people make up 13 percent of the general U.S. population, but nearly 40 percent of the prison population. [12] In 2016, the imprisonment rate for Black and African American men (2,417 per 100,000 Black male residents) was more than 6 times greater than that for white men (401 per 100,000 white male residents) and the imprisonment rate for Black and African American women (97 per 100,000 Black and African American female residents) was almost double that for white women (49 per 100,000 white female residents). [13] Black and African American people with mental health conditions, specifically those involving psychosis, are more likely to be in jail or prison than people of other races. [5]
Because less than 2 percent of American Psychological Association members are Black or African American, some may worry that mental health care practitioners are not culturally competent enough to treat their specific issues. [14]
Stigma and judgment prevent Black and African American people from seeking treatment for their mental illnesses. Research indicates that Blacks and African Americans believe that mild depression or anxiety would be considered “crazy” in their social circles. Furthermore, many believe that discussions about mental illness would not be appropriate even among family. [15]

Access/Insurance

Disparities in access to care and treatment for Black and African American people have also persisted over time.

- While the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has helped to close the gap in uninsured individuals, 11.5 percent of Black and African Americans, versus 7.5 percent of white Americans were still uninsured in 2018. [16]
- In 2018, 58.2 percent of Black and African American young adults 18-25 and 50.1 percent of adults 26-49 with serious mental illness did NOT receive treatment. [7]
- Nearly 90 percent of Black and African American people over the age of 12 with a substance use disorder did NOT receive treatment. [7]
- In 2016, 12.3 percent of Black and African American adults who had a doctor’s office or clinic visit over the past year had difficulty getting needed care, tests or treatment compared to 6.8 percent of white adults. [17]

Most emergency departments are ill-equipped to meet the needs of patients in the midst of mental health crises.
Most insurance plans view mental illness and addiction as exceptions to standard care, not part of it.
Despite an overall cultural shift towards compassion, our society still tends to view the mentally ill and those with addiction as morally broken rather than as ill.

John V. Campo, MD, is professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

Latinx/Hispanic Communities And Mental Health

admin38 — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 18:53:33 +0000

Latinx/Hispanic Communities And Mental Health

The Latinx/Hispanic community is made up of diverse individuals oftentimes set apart by their country of origin or ancestral history.

For the Latinx/Hispanic community, mental health and mental illness are often stigmatized topics resulting in prolonged suffering in silence. This silence compounds the range of experiences that may lead to mental health conditions including immigration, acculturation, trauma, and generational conflicts. Additionally, the Latinx/Hispanic community faces unique institutional and systemic barriers that may impede access to mental health services, resulting in reduced help-seeking behaviors.

Mental Health America (MHA) works at both the national and local levels to raise awareness about mental health. We believe that everyone at risk for mental illnesses and related disorders should receive early and effective interventions based on the unique needs of the individual. We are focused on creating materials and content that help to bridge the gap in knowledge about mental health conditions with the goal of normalizing conversations around mental health in this community.

We strive to ensure that our Spanish language materials are translated and adapted to be reflective of the various sub-groups that make up the Spanish-speaking community. A complete list of Spanish language materials, including our Spanish-language screening tools, is provided further below.

Demographics/Societal Issues

By 2060, the number of Latinx/Hispanic people in the United States is projected to grow to 119 million, or 28.6 percent of the population. [1]
62 percent of U.S. Latinx/Hispanic people have a Mexican background, followed by 9.5 percent with a Puerto Rican background, 3.9 percent with a Salvadoran background, 3.9 percent with a Cuban background, 3.5 percent with a Dominican background, and 2.5 percent with a Guatemalan background. [2]
Thirty-three percent of U.S. immigrants are Latinx/Hispanic and 79 percent of Latinx/Hispanic people living in the U.S. are citizens.[2]
Overall, 16 percent of Latinx/Hispanic people have a bachelor’s degree or higher. [2]
Nineteen percent of Latinx/Hispanic people in the U.S. live in poverty. [2]
Latinx/Hispanic people are highly concentrated in a few states in the U.S. There are one million or more Latinx/Hispanic people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Texas. [3]

Attitudes

Religion can be a protective factor for mental health in Latinx/Hispanic communities (faith, prayer) but can also contribute to the stigma against mental illness and treatment (demons, lack of faith, sinful behavior), so targeting religious institutions to help encourage good mental health and treatment-seeking is important. [4]
There is a perception in Latinx/Hispanic communities, especially among older people, that discussing problems with mental health can create embarrassment and shame for the family, resulting in fewer people seeking treatment. [5]

Prevalence

Research shows that in the Latinx/Hispanic population, older adults and youth are more susceptible to mental distress relating to immigration and acculturation. [6]
While rates of mental health disorders among Latinx Americans are lower than those for non-Latinx whites and are higher among U.S.-born Latinx/Hispanic people than those who are foreign-born [6].
Despite this, according to SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, overall mental health issues are on the rise for Latinx/Hispanic people between the ages of 12-49. [7]
Serious mental illness (SMI) rose from 4 percent to 6.4 percent in Latinx/Hispanic people ages 18-25, and from 2.2 percent to 3.9 percent in the 26-49 age range between 2008 and 2018.
Major depressive episodes increased from 12.6 percent-15.1 percent in Latinx/Hispanic youth ages 12-17, 8 percent to 12 percent in young adults 18-25, and 4.5 percent to 6 percent in the 26-49 age range between 2015 and 2018.
Suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts are also rising among Latinx/Hispanic young adults. While still lower than the overall U.S. population aged 18-25, 8.6 percent (650,000) of Latinx/Hispanic 18-25 year-olds had serious thoughts of suicide in 2018, compared to 7 percent (402,000) in 2008. Three percent (224,000) made a plan in 2018, compared to 2 percent (116,000) in 2008, and 2 percent (151,000) made an attempt in 2018, compared to 1.6 percent (90,000) in 2008.
Binge drinking, smoking (cigarettes and marijuana), illicit drug use, and prescription pain reliever misuse are more frequent among Latinx/Hispanic adults with mental illnesses.

Treatment Issues

The American Psychiatric Association digested several studies in a 2017 fact sheet. [6] Among its highlights, it found that:

Latinx/Hispanic people are more likely to seek help for a mental health disorder from a primary care provider (10 percent) than a mental health specialist (5 percent).
Poor communication with health care providers is often an issue. There is a shortage of bilingual or Spanish speaking mental health professionals.
Bilingual patients are evaluated differently when evaluated in English versus Spanish, and Latinx/Hispanic people are more frequently undertreated than whites.
Latinx/Hispanic adolescents use anti-depressants at half the rate of their white counterparts.
Latinx/Hispanic children use stimulants for ADD and ADHD at half the rate of white children.
Mental health problems can be hard to identify, because Latinx/Hispanic people will often focus on physical symptoms and not psychiatric symptoms during doctor visits.

Access/Insurance

Eighteen percent of Latinx/Hispanic people in the U.S. do not have health insurance, with those of Honduran and Guatemalan origin having the highest rates of being uninsured (35 percent and 33 percent respectively). [2]
In 2018, 56.8 percent of Latinx/Hispanic young adults 18-25 and 39.6 percent of adults 26-49 with serious mental illness did NOT receive treatment. [7]
Nearly 90 percent of Latinx/Hispanic people over the age of 12 with a substance use disorder did NOT receive treatment. [7]
In addition, in April 2014, MHA launched a suite of online mental health screening tools on its website (www.MHAscreening.org). In analyzing a sample of over 50,000 screens, MHA found that significant percentages of Latinx/Hispanic respondents indicated that they would either self-monitor their mental health or seek guidance from a peer.

Screening Tools

Taking a mental health screening is one of the quickest and easiest ways to determine whether you are experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition.

MHA tiene dos pruebas en Español:

MedAssist Offers Mobile Free Pharmacy Events

First families graduate from AGJ – CareRing

HPV Vaccines: Who Requires It and How it Works

It’s time to recognize mental health as essential to physical health

admin38 — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 17:55:36 +0000

It’s time to recognize mental health as essential to physical health

The human brain is a wonder. Through folds of tissue and pulses of electricity, it lets us perceive, attempt to understand, and shape the world around us. As science rapidly charts the brain’s complex structures, new discoveries are revealing the biology of how the mind functions and fails. Given the centrality of the brain to human health, its malfunctions should be a priority, separated from stigma and treated on par with the diseases of the body. We aren’t there yet, but the transformation is underway.

Most emergency departments are ill-equipped to meet the needs of patients in the midst of mental health crises.
Most insurance plans view mental illness and addiction as exceptions to standard care, not part of it.
Despite an overall cultural shift towards compassion, our society still tends to view the mentally ill and those with addiction as morally broken rather than as ill.

John V. Campo, MD, is professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.

Don’t live your life on someone else’s timeline.

admin38 — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:09:18 +0000

Go at your own pace.

If you start to compare where you are in life with someone else … take these steps:

1. Create goals that inspire you

The easiest way to realign yourself is to create goals and plans to achieve them. Most people are goal oriented, so even setting daily goals will help kickstart your biggest dreams. Make sure your goals are measurable and excite you.

If you feel like you are constantly comparing yourself to others, it could be a sign you have no achievable goals set at the moment, and you are “waiting” for something to happen. Don’t wait … if you want something bad enough, go for it.

2. Use your energy to focus on yourself

It sounds so simple, but channel your inner post breakup self and work on YOU! Don’t spend your time comparing yourself to others when you can be killing it in the gym or being a badass at work.

Remember, you have every tool you need to be successful. It’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to be.

3. Change who you are comparing yourself to

Compare yourself to you.

How can you be a better you? If you start comparing yourself to yourself everyday, you will begin to realize whether or not you are making progress in your overall life.

4. Remember that you’re not always seeing the whole picture

Social media makes it extremely easy to get caught up in the glamorous sides of our lives. As you know, everyone has good days and bad days. Not every travel blogger is happy each second of the day, and not every fashion blogger has their life figured out.

If there are no struggles or hardships in our lives, it would be so boring.

5. Someone else’s success ISN’T YOUR FAILURE

Everyone runs on different timelines. EVERYONE. If your time hasn’t come yet, don’t worry, it will when the universe wants it to. Be happy for those that are crushing their goals and dreams.

Things to say to a loved one with anxiety.

admin38 — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 11:25:00 +0000

Things to say to a love one with anxiety.

"You are not alone"

Reassure your loved ones that their struggles are valid and reminding them that they aren’t alone, can help them keep perspective and feel supported.

"There is no reason to feel ashamed"

Treat an anxiety diagnosis the same as you would a high blood pressure diagnosis: Without judgement. When both your words and actions show acceptance, you can make your loved ones feel supported and loved.

"There is no reason to feel ashamed"

Reassure your loved ones that their struggles are valid and reminding them that they aren’t alone, can help them keep perspective and feel supported.

“It’s ok to not be ok.”

It’s important for your loved ones to hear, “It’s ok that you feel anxious. I’m here with you. There’s no pressure for you to feel good right now.” This is different from saying, “You’re ok,” which can be incredibly invalidating. Rather, you are making it clear that, “It’s ok that you’re not ok.” This can help them to feel safer, supported and validated. It can also help them to feel safe admitting they are not ok.

“How can I help?”

Let them tell you what they need. People are much more likely to accept help when it is offered than if they have to ask for it. The key is to simply offer.

People are more likely to seek help if they don’t feel judged. Likely, you would never question someone for going to a cardiologist or doubt their need to take blood pressure medicine. Likewise, you should never question someone who needs professional guidance or medication for a mental illness. As a loved one, your role is not to be a doctor, nor an expert, but rather to help your loved one seek the help they need.