Symptoms Of Mental Illness

Carers Of The Mentally Ill Can Learn To Look For Early Warning Signs

A Carer of a family member with a mental illness is going to be faced with a lot of new decisions and new emotions that they never would ever have thought about before when their family members is diagnosed with a mental illness.

Most people who suffer from a mental illness retain some sort of level of the illness for the rest of their lives.  A Carer of a mentally ill person will need to develop strategies so that the affects of the mental illness is minimized for all concerned.

 

Learning from repetition

 

Over time an alert Carer will start recognizing signs that will pre-warn them that an episode of some sort is about to happen. For example, the quick walking backwards and forwards in the house will show that the sufferer is getting agitated and at this time the Carer can start taking some actions to try and reduce the stress levels, whether it be through the prescribed medication or through distraction such as going for a walk.   Or they may appear drowsy and become withdrawn and this will be a sign that they are not coping as well as usual.

Mental illnesses come with all sorts of symptoms and some will repeat themselves which the Carer will learn to recognise but others will be new to them and the Carer will have to learn to deal with them as they appear.

 

Coping with the various mental illnesses

 

Each person who has a mental illness presents in a different way, even if two people have the same diagnosis, it is more than likely each person will present different symptoms or different symptoms will present stronger than others in each person. Another problem is that the symptons can and do often change at a fairly rapid rate.

 

With this in mind the Carer needs to be alert to the different symptoms and where the sufferer is mentally at any given time.  One cannot be complacent and say, “I know how he/she is because of this…………”, because what you have been experiencing today could well be different tomorrow.

 

The highs and lows of a mental illness

 

Because the symptoms are constantly changing it means the Carer will be presented with new symptoms from time to time that they have not seen before. 

 

Not only will the symptoms change at different times, they could change within minutes.  Within the space of an hour a person who is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for example, could show signs of paranoia, signs of voices in their head, signs of calmness and other symptoms as well.

 

The person inflicted with a mental illness often does not have control over their thoughts and that is why it is so difficult to care for them.  You might start doing something for them following a particular display of a symptom, then half an hour later they will say to you, “why did you do that?” and are totally unaware that there had been anything wrong.  If challenged they will think that you are making a story up and may think that you are doing so just to get back at them for something.

 

As a Carer your best coping strategy is absorbing as much as you can about each symptom, find out what works best in coping with it, learn about others that you have not yet seen and attempt to do your best at the time.  Don’t beat yourself up if something that worked before does not work now, unfortunately that is just the nature of what is being dealth with.  

About the Author

Kaye Dennan is the author of an ebook ‘Carer Coping Strategies’.  Kaye has been a carer for 10 years and has been a Carers’ Support group facilitator for 3 years.  To read more about mental health carer’s coping strategies visit http://schizophrenia-carers.com

Symptoms of Mental Illness May Be Caused by Medical Problems

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