Mental health is that important part of your health that you may not pay much attention to, or even think that you need to pay attention to at all. Some people still think of mental health as something so stigmatized that getting treatment means there’s something wrong with them.
But really, we’re talking about your brain, which — as you’re probably aware — is an organ of your body, and at the end of the day, mental health is just another part of your overall physical health. For this reason, it is important to understand the facts behind it, and to feel no shame if you need or want treatment.
10. Electroshock Treatments Were Not Quite The Horror Show You May Think They Were
In a lot of popular movies, it’s a common trope, when showing how horrible the old days of mental health treatment were, to treat the viewers to a montage of horrible abuses. Usually this includes people being restrained and beaten, or held under icy water, or of course, the classic: shocking them with electricity while they are awake to try to “shock” them back into good behavior.
However, this is a misunderstanding of electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. It did indeed see a fair amount of use back in the days of old timey mental health, but it was not known to have been done to people while they were conscious. The idea was to attempt to fix their brain imbalances by messing with the electrical signals in the brain and it was done under sedation and careful medical supervision. As for those who think this was still barbaric in some way, we would simply add that it is actually still used today sometimes to treat things like depression — again, under medical supervision and under sedation.
9. Many Homeless People Are Mentally Ill And In Need Of Treatment
Now, we want to start off by being clear that this doesn’t mean we are saying that homeless people should not be trusted with homes because they are all mentally ill, or that even mentally ill homeless people cannot necessarily be trusted with homes. Rather, it is important to understand that sometimes the problem is actually more complicated and requires more action than simply affordable housing.
Statistics on how many mentally ill people are homeless are going to be partially estimated as not everyone is even getting the treatment they need, but some sources put the number at as high as 30% of the homeless population. Some sources put this number as closer to 25%, but caution that this is still extremely bad, as the amount of mentally ill people in the general population is closer to 5%. This means that for a good quarter of the homeless population, we need to provide better mental health services, and for some people, more community based intervention, along with affordable housing.
8. There Is No Evidence That High Doses Of LSD Can Make You Permanently Delusional
We have all heard it before: If you take too much LSD at once, or too many times, or both, you will become permanently delusional. Many people are so convinced of this they will argue it despite having no facts to back it up, and will even suggest that other psychedelics don’t make you permanently insane, but that acid is somehow special that way. However, being the buzz killingtons that they are, scientists decided to go ahead and see if there was any truth to these claims.
Unfortunately for those who hold a morbid fascination with the idea of LSD causing permanent insanity, the truth is that the evidence doesn’t back it up. In a study of 130,000 adults, scientists found zero evidence that the substance leads to permanent brain damage. So if it isn’t true, why do so many people believe it? Well, this all goes back to an old story about a guy who had a sheet of acid in his pocket and in some way or another, it got accidentally wet and he took all the acid at once. He then became so crazy from the acid that he thought he was a glass of orange juice for the rest of his life. As amusing as the story is, it is nothing more than an urban legend with nothing whatsoever to back it up.
7. Vitamin-D Has A Link To Mental Health And Most People Are Deficient
Vitamin D is something we get from sunlight, and the modern world just does not get as much of it naturally as we used to. For this reason, it has become more and more common for experts to recommend that people take vitamin D supplements even from a young age. And the truth is, they have very good reasons for being worried about the world’s Vitamin D intake.
The best estimates of the world’s population suggest that roughly one billion of the seven billion plus people in the world have a serious deficiency, and about 50% of the world at least has less than they should be getting. The United States is also doing a bit worse than average, as about 35% of Americans are estimated to have a serious deficiency. This is important not just for our physical health, but for our mental health. It has been proven that Vitamin D deficiency has a link to depression, or at least depression-like symptoms. Now, we aren’t saying that going outside more and taking supplements will cure your depression, but it is an important part of our overall health that affects our mental well being as well.
6. The Emotional Support Of Cats And Dogs Helps People Live Longer
If you live alone, it would actually be really good for your mental health if you have a cat or a dog. Unfortunately, your insurance almost certainly won’t cover the cost of the pet or its food. However, what it does mean is that you can make yourself a lot happier, and live a lot longer, if you adopt a furry pal and bond with them. Of course, this is something most pet owners have been proclaiming for years, but those inquisitive scientists have taken the time to prove it for you once and for all.
A study designed to test the effectiveness of dogs at helping people who lived alone, especially those who were at risk, live longer, found that pooches were extremely helpful. Heart disease patients who lived with a dog were found to live 21% longer than the control group. As for cats, a 20 year study found that it wasn’t just living alone with them, but just having a cat around period gave people a 40% decreased risk of heart disease compared to the general population.
5. Many People Don’t Realize That Undiagnosed Celiac Can Manifest Mental Health Symptoms
Celiac disease is still not greatly understood, and there is still a lot of debate about it. Some medical professionals argue whether celiac sensitivity is a real thing, or whether those who think they have a sensitivity but not full on celiac have a problem with something else in processed grains. Regardless, certainly more people than many once thought definitely have actual celiac disease, which can cause more than just bowel sensitivity and inflammation, but all sorts of other serious health problems, as it is an autoimmune disease.
One thing celiac can do that many people are unaware of is that it can actually manifest mental health symptoms, including cognitive effects so debilitating at strong enough levels that it can mimic schizophrenia and cause misdiagnosis. However, it gets worse. While researchers caution it is just one study, they found that a high rate of adults who had been treated for celiac so they were no longer eating gluten, were still being treated for schizophrenia. This suggests that in some way, the schizophrenia symptoms may have been permanent, or the gluten may have triggered a latent disease.
4. Mentally Ill People Are More Likely To Be Victims Than Victimizers
It’s a common belief that mentally ill people are the ones most likely to do things like shoot up a workplace, or just go attack someone violently for no reason. There are a thousand legends about this, but this isn’t really how things work out in actuality. The actual facts show us that in most cases, the opposite is actually true. Studies on crime have proven time after time that mentally ill people are far more likely to be the victims of crime than they are the victimizers, and that this definitely includes violent crime as well.
As for how much more likely mentally ill people are to be the victims, it may actually be more than you imagined. A ten year study in Denmark found that men who had been treated for mental illness were actually 50% more likely to be the victims of violent crime. As for women, as you might imagine it was even worse, with them being 64% more likely to be victims if they had been treated for a mental illness within the last 10 years.
3. You Can Actually Use Too Much Serotonin
Serotonin is the feel-good chemical that you often activate by using recreational drugs. However, it can also be triggered by using antidepressants, and even some medicines like over the counter cough syrup. Most people just think of it as a fun way to enjoy themselves more and have a way that they like to activate it in their brain, even if they have a way that doesn’t involve drugs. However, this substance can be used too much and put you in serious danger.
Now, we aren’t saying that one recreational drug is likely to make this happen to you, but if you are taking prescriptions along with recreational drugs,or over the counter drugs and don’t know the interactions, it can happen quicker than you might think. As for how dangerous it can be, the answer is that it can kill you. It can cause your blood to clot irregularly, cause your heart to beat too fast or too slow and can also cause serious electrolyte imbalances. The fact it is literally trying to kill you may explain why so many people who have this happen to them have a feeling of doom.
2. Experiments With Street Drugs For Mental Health Should Be Supervised By A Doctor
Many people have heard that doctors are increasingly researching psychedelic drugs and other street drugs for use in therapeutic settings, and while this is true, it has unfortunately caused a number of people to think that they can now self medicate even more than they did before — or start doing so when they weren’t. Now the thing is, even the doctors testing this stuff recommend against this for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that they want to know what specific thing you have, so they can best figure out as a doctor what drug would be best for you along with what type of therapy.
However, there are some other reasons as well that are equally important. For starters, many drugs today are simply not safe, at least not without a very good testing kit that you would bet your lie on. More and more often drugs at festivals and clubs are being tested and found to contain fentanyl. Apart from instant death however, researchers also caution that the wrong drug could trigger a latent disorder in someone, and that the whole point of these studies that show the drugs helping involve using it in a therapeutic setting while talking to a trained psychiatric professional.
1. The Lobotomy Was Probably Even Worse Than You Thought It Was
Many have heard of the lobotomy, and how it was often used to treat people who had extremely bad mental health issues before we had pills. Many have also heard that it was usually performed by ramming an icepick behind someone’s eyeballs. Now, while this is mostly true, the full reality of it is actually far worse than you imagined.
For starters, if someone was not careful, they could give you dementia, or epilepsy as side effects, or even a brain bleed or infection that will kill you. These are just the immediately dangerous effects of it going wrong though. The lobotomy was already known for decreasing people’s cognitive function, but if done wrong it could make you extremely mentally challenged.
However, even if things went right, you could expect some pretty unhappy outcomes. People could expect anywhere from mild cognitive impairment to having the mind of a child again, and incontinence was common. And, while patients often did have a reduction in their mental health symptoms, they often reported feeling a flat affect or apathy as well. Unfortunately, this still isn’t the worst of it. While it is true it was often used for serious diseases, it was also being used as a trend fix for things like depression, anxiety, or hysteria (something you may recognize as a misogynistic disease that no longer exists ). As for the icepick, that was considered a more humane way to do it than the original, which involved drilling a hole into someone’s brain first.