What About Your Mind?

Life is difficult. We spend a lifetime trying to feel happy and be at peace. Yet we do not spend a few minutes to develop the tool to achieve this happiness.

When was the last time you took time out to think about your mind? Your mind thinks a thousand thoughts each hour. A million feelings engulf you each moment. You view things and you interpret situations.

Welcome to reality, you are vulnerable. We all are vulnerable. Acknowledging your vulnerability allows you to cope with it.

Some times our vulnerability interacts with our circumstances and manifests in form of symptoms of psychiatric disorder.

Let us challenge a few myths about psychiatric disorders.

• Psychiatric disorders are common.
• Psychiatric disorders are easily treatable.
• That you suffer from a psychiatric disorder is not your fault, some of the psychiatric problems happen because of chemical imbalances in the brain. Just as Diabetes or Hypertension are illnesses similarly most psychiatric disorders can be seen as an illness process.
• Unfortunately in most psychiatric disorders it is not possible to do a blood test to prove that you have a problems
• You do not become mad if you go to a psychiatrist.
• It is not a sign of weakness if you consult a psychiatrist.
• The treatments available are varied. You are very unlikely to be given 'shocks'.
• Most psychiatric drugs are not addictive.
• For problems of every day life like marital discord, difficulties of children, low self-esteem, minor depression, lack of assertiveness, impulse dyscontrol etc. talking treatments are better.
• Even the more severe illnesses like schizophrenia are more treatable than stroke.
• Images of psychiatric disorders and psychiatrists you see in the media is as true as the fact that a hero can fight a hundred villains or survive a million. Psychiatrists are not mind reading or manipulative or absent minded eccentrics. The people they treat are brave; they have at least acknowledged that they have difficulties and are doing something about it.
• It is all right to seek help and let the stigma be damned.

Psychiatry offers you hope. It works towards the realization of your potential and dreams. It makes what is probable possible. It is not about some vague unconscious desires or madness. It can help you to cope with every day life.