When a family member has mental health, the entire family can have the struggle. Assisting through negotiating the system, assisting with options for care decisions, assisting with acceptance and still loving the person even though there can be difficult times. This can be overwhelming for not just the person with mental health but everyone that they are connected to.
So one obvious question can be, how does someone assist with care and not take so much on that it encompasses their life completely? Sometimes the person, who they are, their connection to family, the role they play, gets lost in the care. The key is that people with mental health must take responsibility for themselves. The family members’ job is to assist not control. Someone with mental illness needs respect and compassion. There can be difficult times ahead and lots of feelings of overwhelm because there is no perfect science in mental health care, it is and has to be individual care. For the caregiver it is about patience. Helping with the connection to care and discuss what options are out there is important support. The road to health can be difficult and there is a lot of information to take in, but not impossible and remember it takes time and lots of patience.
The one thing that everyone needs to take in is that there is no one fit for all, it is an individual journey. There can be lots of reactions to prescriptions. The other thought is to understand that general practitioners in Canada have very little global understanding of medications and the side effects, although they are responsible to write the prescription. The medical side through their training has a silo of knowledge. This is not the doctor’s fault; it is the systems flaw. It is the patient that lives with the side effects, and over the long term there can be changes to the bodies’ balance that can be hard to reverse. Considering a natural solution is not masking the symptoms, as prescriptions might do, but looking up stream and offering the body support with solutions that are already produced in nature. Natural solutions are long-lasting support as you are introducing what the body already knows and accepts. A body’s natural balance may have been compromised through life events or genetics being triggered but natural solutions can help bring things back into balance.
Need help finding solutions, email, info@mindhealthconnect.ca