Head Game

There is no “best” way to cope with any of the numerous mental health disorders, so finding a method that works is critical for anyone battling a condition, whether it be depression or self-harm.

For Loyola student Elisabeth Carr, a combination of medication and therapy has helped her deal with despair. Makeba Tsibu, 19, a Loyola sophomore, used counseling to fight the urge to cut her wrists. For others, joining a support group or adopting a rigorous exercise routine has been the answer. 

“People need to be motivated to get treatment,” said Dr. Patti Kimbel, a practicing psychologist and professor at Chicago’s Roosevelt University.

Carr, 20, a sophomore from Bay City, Michigan, is studying psychology and working at Loyola’s Museum of Art. Although she finds comfort in socializing or reading a book, each day presents a challenge, and it has been that way since she was diagnosed with general anxiety and depression in her last year of high school.

“I guess the main thing is that I stopped enjoying things that I used to enjoy,” said Carr, whose road to salvation began when she confided in her best friend, who had been diagnosed with depression. After educating herself about her family history, and learning her grandfather and two aunts struggle with anxiety depression and bipolar disorder, Carr decided to get help from the school therapist.  

“When I told my best friend I was struggling, it was great to have that weight off my chest and to be able to discuss it.” 

Today, Carr said she is less dependent on counseling, and has found other coping methods.

“I don’t assume everyone knows, but I deal with it like everyone knows,” Carr said. I don’t hide it but I don’t mention it unless it is relevant.”

 She is especially reluctant to tell her extended family.

“Not everyone in my extended family knows that I deal with mental illness,” Carr said. “They can be a little disrespectful, which I find discouraging…..It’s just hard, you want people to understand and you don’t want people to treat you differently. People say it’s all in my head, which it is because it’s a mental illness, but, that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Time to Change, a social movement created to fight myths and stigmas about mental health, found that more than 1 in 3 people with mental health problems have been treated negatively as a result of stigma.

Not everyone can afford to get professional help or treatment. Tsibu was diagnosed with depression at the age of 12, after her father died of a stroke.

Her freshman year, Tsibu received treatment at the Loyola Wellness Center, which offers services such as counseling, group therapy, health education and even a therapy dog. Most are free to Loyola students regardless of insurance status, and the center has had more than  20,000 visits since the 2014/2015 school year, according to its website.

However, the sessions are limited to 6-8 visits each academic year. Students who are seeking longer-term therapy, or whose counselor determines they would benefit from longer-term therapy, are given referrals.

Tsibu doesn’t have the financial means to seek outside help, which pushes Tsibu to find her own forms of treatment. Tsibu often draws comics and cartoons, writes free verse poetry, and shops at her favorite store, TopShop. 

One of Tsibu’s personal accomplishments is stopping self-harm. She hurt herself using a medical blade to cut her wrist. With the help of added responsibilities from school, her job and writing poetry in her free time, she stopped self-harm a year ago.

“I’ve been writing a lot more,” she says. “I read a lot of poetry over the summer, and I was thinking maybe I could turn all this depressing stuff that I’m feeling and thinking, and like write it all down and maybe it will sound like a poem, as opposed to keep reliving it over and over in my head.”

She also got rid of the medical blade. 

“I was kind of like maybe I should just stop,” she said.There are other non-medical treatment options, such as joining a support group, finding a hobby, exercising or utilizing a hotline or phone apps such as “Text a Tip” and “Stop, Breathe, and Think.”

 “Text a Tip” is a crisis line aimed at preventing people from harming themselves. Users can text TIP708 and send their messages to 274637 (or Crimes) if they see suspicious activity. All personal phone information will be stripped from the text before it is forwarded to the authorities.

“Stop, Breathe, and Think” is a free application designed for “guided meditations and mindfulness,” according to the website stopbreathethink.com. There are two versions, one for children and one for adults, which encourages users to take 5 minutes to evaluate what they are feeling.

“Stop what you are doing. Check in with what you are thinking, and how you are feeling. Breathe. Practice mindful breathing to create space between your thoughts, emotions and reactions. Think. Broaden your perspective and strengthen your force field of peace with personalized meditations and actives,” users are told.

According to Kimbel, an assistant clinical professor at Roosevelt University who also has 15 years experience as a private practice clinician, “social media had aided reduction of suicide rates in the past five years” from teens creating posts.

Steven Davis, 31, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, recommends that people affected with a mental illness look for different options until they find something that works for them.

“If it’s something they have medications for, definitely try them,” said Davis, a mechanical engineer who was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and depression in the first grade. “If you try them and you’re still having problems, it means you need to try something else. Unfortunately, it’s gonna be a trial-and-error process.”  

Davis changed his medication after going back to college for a second time and experienced a huge improvement. “The fact that I actually graduated college was a big deal to me,” Davis said. “I didn’t decide to change my depression meds until after I decided I was going back to school.Fortunately I did try something really different, and it worked for me.”

Davis said he pushes himself to exercise for at least an hour everday at the gym to feel better both mentally and physically. He also listens to audio books when doing house chores.

“It’s very important to get regular exercise and socialize with people,” he said. “That can be a very good support system.” 

Regardless of the solution, those inside and outside the medical profession agree on one thing: Doing nothing is not an option. 

Meditation Over Medicine

When it comes to tackling mental illness and other disorders, the marketplace seems to be saying that conventional is not always the best way to go. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, no fan of radical methods and procedures, on its website notes that “more than one-third of American adults reported using some form of CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) and that visits to CAM providers each year exceed those to primary-care physicians,”

That may help explain why non-traditional forms of therapy such as meditation, lifestyle changes and nutritional supplements are gaining traction as ways to improve mental health. Increasingly, medication isn’t the only line of defense.

“Physicians are the number one prescribers of anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication in this country,” said Dr. Patti Kimbel, a psychologist and director of training for graduate students in clinical psychology at Roosevelt University in Chicago.“Their approach is, ‘Here, take this pill.’ It’s not, ‘Why don’t you seek some counseling?’ ”

Even though professional treatment is often recommended, it is not always an option for everyone because of expense and work schedules. Those looking for outside help often turn to the internet, books and magazines according to a paper published at Harvard University titled “FDA and the Challenge of Alternative Medicine.”

Support for non-traditional options is not universal. So, although the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) may favor the unconventional, the FDA usually doesn’t.

Harvard notes the agency responsible for protecting public health by regulating products and the nation’s food supply “has displayed a simple lack of coherent policy toward alternative medicine.” It adds the FDA does not consider alternative medicine a realistic option because it’s not generally taught in U.S. medical schools.

Treatments and medicines from other cultures are assumed to be dangerous, and there are also concerns that natural products presumed to be safe can be “consumed in such concentrated doses that they can be toxic and even deadly.”

For its part, the FDA says that products used in a CAM therapy or practice will be “subject to regulation as a drug. This applies to any product that is not generally recognized by scientific experts to ensure the effects and safety of the drug.” 

Other products and practices not considered conventional medicine include energy therapies, manipulative body-based methods and mind-body medicine.

Although NAMI says natural products such as Omega-3 found in fish can be taken in place of medication to help halt the advance of schizophrenia, other studies noted in the Journal of Clinical Medicine say supporting data actually are inconclusive. The same is true regarding the benefits of folic acids and vitamin supplements.

The therapeutic effects of such mind-and-body treatments as yoga, exercise and tai chi are less in dispute.

So, why does this matter? One reason is that encountering mental illness is more common than one might think. According to NAMI, “43.8 million [Americans] experience mental illness in a given year [or 1 in 5 adults],” with “half of mental health conditions [beginning] by age 14.”

A second is that some people with a mental illness may begin to internalize stereotypes or refuse to get treatment to avoid being labeled. According to NAMI, “Nearly 60 percent of adults with a mental illness didn’t receive mental health services in the previous year.”

Ashley Gilbert, 26, doesn’t necessarily fit in to any group, but has been experimenting with meditation for four months. The single mom and full-time supervisor has not been diagnosed with a mental illness but said she has struggled with stress management and anxiety after being harassed on the job by a former manager. Ordinary things frustrate Gilbert, but she found relief when she learned to focus her thoughts and reach a heightened level of awareness. 

“You are at peace in meditation,” she said. 

According a journal published by the American Medical Association, a 2012 study on the effects of meditation conducted on more than 3,000 people found “mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety, depression and pain, and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health-related quality of life.”

Gilbert doesn’t think medication should be anyone’s only treatment option, touting the power of learning how to channel emotions through taking up art or writing, and making healthy lifestyle choices such as cutting back on coffee and drinking more water. 

“Holistic practices are amazing,” Gilbert said. “I’d prefer them over medication, (which) doesn’t do anything but cause other health-related issues.”