How good are you at
recognizing early signs that your mental health is slipping? I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, and I make mental health education videos. It's very hard to pull
yourself out of a hole when you bottom out from depression. It's much easier to change your course if you haven't gotten too low. Here are some relatively common signs that your mental health is going downward. And these are in no particular order. Number one, you stop bathing or reduce it to maybe once
a week or every other week. I use the term bathing, because I'm not talking
specifically about taking a shower if you're someone who regularly
sponges off in the sink. This isn't a judgment about
how you clean yourself. The significance is that
whatever way you clean yourself, you stop doing it or struggle
to do it consistently. This low attention to hygiene is more common than one might think. I see it a lot and I always ask about it when someone isn't doing well. Because when you get depressed,
everything becomes hard. You can lie in bed and feel overwhelmed with the thought of needing to undress, much less cover your
body with soap and rinse. What's more, because hygiene
is one of those basic things that we all attend to,
you know it's not good that you don't feel like doing it. And some people can
really beat themselves up or really feel bad for not
keeping themselves clean. The guilt doesn't make you do it though. It just adds to the misery you feel. The second sign is not brushing your teeth for days, weeks, or even
months for some people. And this is similar to not
bathing, but a little different as people prioritize
personal hygiene differently. If you live in a warm
climate or do active work, you may not be able to go without bathing. But brushing your teeth
becomes the extra thing that just becomes too hard. A third sign that your
mental health is slipping is your surroundings
become super cluttered. You may have days of
dishes piled in the sink with dried food stuck to them, or clothes all over the floor, mail stacked up that you haven't read. You may have a full voicemail and hundreds of unanswered
emails and text messages. And the unanswered emails and texts may be because it's too hard to check, but it can also be because
of the fourth sign, which is you frequently lose track of time and can spend lots of time
sitting around doing nothing. One of the features of depression is what's called psychomotor slowing. Your mind moves slowly and even your body movements are slowed. It's like you're living with your speed turned down to one half. At this pace, things take longer to do, but also you can sit around staring into space doing nothing. You think you're only sitting
there for five minutes, but someone around you notices that you're not doing
much and you're like, "It was just a couple of minutes." And the other person's like, "No, you've been sitting
there half an hour." So because time moves slower for you, you don't get much done
and things pile up. Before you know it, you've
got 30 unchecked text messages from friends and family, a full voicemail, and dozens of emails. Now you feel behind on everything and it's overwhelming to try to catch up. Going back to the staring
in space, you may think, "I'd love to have the disposable time "to sit around and do nothing." But it's not easy for
a non-depressed person to sit with no stimulation unless you're doing
some form of meditation. We need some kind of stimulation, and it's easy to meet that
need with a mobile device. So to be in a room with nothing going on and just looking around
means something isn't right. Number five is feeling strong emotions just underneath the
surface, especially when those emotions don't
match your circumstances. An example of this is feeling
tears just behind your eyes that can fall at any time, even when there's
nothing making you upset. You feel fragile and
life itself feels sad. Or you may feel anger in your chest, like fire in a dragon's chest, that you're afraid will just spew out at the least provocation. Feeling unstable like this
can lead to the sixth sign, which is isolating and avoiding people. You may be afraid that you'll break down in front of people or blow up and lose your stuff in front of them. Or maybe even if you think
you can hold it together, you don't want people asking you a lot of questions about how you're doing. If you're unhappy and just still trying to push through the days,
you don't want to be reminded of how unhappy you are
or hear about how perfect everyone else's life seems by comparison. The last sign is feeling
exhausted and sleepy, no matter how much rest you get. And this isn't just an energy thing. You can actually fall asleep a couple of hours after you got up. And this may tie into the sign of being able to sit unstimulated
and lose track of time. So you can sit for a while looking around and then doze off and not
realize you were sleeping until you come to or someone
interrupts you from your nap. Although oversleeping and feeling tired are symptoms of depression, there are other reasons for having this, such as having a low thyroid condition, low vitamin D levels,
medication side effects, and even high sugar and high carb diets can make you go in and
out of feeling tired and sleepy throughout the day. Can you resonate with any of these signs? If you notice that it's happening to you, it's time for a mental wellness check. And this is where you would
optimize your self care. I think the three foundational things that contribute to mental wellness is prioritizing your sleep
to get seven to nine hours if you're an adult and eight
to 10 if you're a teen, minimizing processed foods from your diet, and getting 150 minutes of moderate level of aerobic exercise a week. The aerobic exercise can be brisk walking in your neighborhood or a park, or you can do it in your home using a free streaming service. The Nike Training Club has free workouts that you can do with trainers. It even includes yoga. I know it sounds basic, but increasing your physical activity has been shown to improve depression symptoms and even pull you up when
you're on your way down. Check out the free workouts
at the Nike Training Club and you can download their app. And watch this video for more on how exercise affects
your mental health. Thanks for watching. See you next time.
