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We learn that mental illness is not a choice. Coping with the many emotions and behavioral urges of mental health disorders do present many choices. What a loved one goes through as their mental health disorder develops and slowly takes over their mind, until they learn how to deal with it, is beyond their control. Unfortunately, it is beyond our control as well. We cannot make them stop hurting us, stop hurting themselves, or change they way they feel. A loved one’s mental health disorder is beyond our jurisdiction, which is challenging, because it can intimately affect our lives. One of the ways we try to cope with a loved one’s mental illness is through resentment. A form of passive aggression, resentment is often described as drinking a poison meant for others, or withholding love from others but instead withholding love from ourselves. To settle resentment, we have to find room for two emotional and spiritual principles: acceptance and forgiveness. First, we have to accept that our loved one has a mental illness which is beyond our control. Second, we have to learn to forgive them for how they might behave and how that behavior might affect us. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Acceptance does not mean condoning. Both can be healing and educations. Learning to set healthy boundaries, create healthy responses, and communicate in healthy ways are part of the process. Recognize Their Work In Recovery The effects of a loved one’s mental health disorder can be traumatizing. Self-harm, verbal abuse, physical abuse, substance abuse- all of the ways they act out can take a toll. As they work on themselves in their recovery by attending treatment and working with a therapist, you have the opportunity to witness their growth and development. How they are changing has to be enough. Letting go of the fear that they may revert into the old version of themselves is a practice in vulnerability. Resentment can feel like a form of protection against future harm. Unfortunately, it only creates harm in the present. Forgiveness sometimes means giving up all hope of a better past. That doesn’t mean relinquishing hope for a better future- as your loved one is already demonstrating the possibilities for what lies ahead in the work they are doing now. It means realizing that no resentment, bitterness, or fear can change what happened in the past or even what will happen in the future. Instead, it encourages letting go and celebrating what is happening now while preparing yourself for what might come in the future.

Learning about your loved one’s mental health diagnosis is the best way to understand what they go through clinically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and even physically. There are different ways to research a diagnosis. First, you can look up the specific diagnosis in the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders which is what diagnosing doctors use for the criteria to make an official diagnosis. You will learn what the requirements of the diagnosis are, which can help you understand how severe or not severe the diagnosis is. In addition, you can identify some of the symptoms you will need to learn to look out for. The next best place to learn about their diagnosis is through first hand accounts online. Today, mental health is a popular subject on many blogs and websites. Thankfully, a growing awareness about mental health disorders has encouraged others to speak up about their personal experiences, their struggles, their treatment, and their recovery. In addition, there are many spouses and partners who write about their experience supporting someone with a mental health disorder. Reading these accounts can give you insight, teach you where to draw healthy boundaries, and most importantly, how to take care of yourself in the process. Lastly, the best place to learn about your partner’s mental health diagnosis is from your partner. After doing research of your own, ask them if it is okay to ask them questions so you can gain a deeper understanding. Get their personal insight on their experience, what they need, what they go through, and what they are learning. If they are going to treatment, have an open conversation about how you can support them in the healthiest way. Being in a relationship with someone actively seeking treatment and therapy for a mental health disorder means learning to take care of your own mental health in the process. Learning to set healthy boundaries and practice effective communication will help maintain necessary balance and structure in your relationship. Together, counseling or therapy can help you learn more about each other’s needs and wants, while developing healthy tools for supporting one another. Seeking out a therapist or counselor of your own can help you work through any issues which might come up, which isn’t uncommon.

Anxiety is one of the leading mental health disorders in the United States. Eighteen percent of the adult population will struggle with an anxiety disorder at some point in time. The New York Times recently wrote about the “American Anxiety” currently taking over the country. Due to tense political times, high levels of stress, a challenging economy, and a difficult job market, more people are living with anxiety, clinical or not, than ever before. “For the past decade or so,” the author describes, “American anxiety was usually described as either a mental-health issue or a generational style.” Today, as mental health disorders gain critical awareness, people are becoming more mindful of how their interactions with everyday American life, from politics to work, are affecting them and causing them what the article describes as “profound unease.” What people are experiencing, the article explains, is an emotion of anxiety and uneasiness, rather than an empirically analytical form of anxiety. “Even if they have incoherent or contradictory senses of why, or what it is they fear, or what should be done about it,” people today are experiencing more dis-ease than they have in recent times. Anxiety as a symptom and a mental health disorder revolves around fear of the unknown, which becomes irrational and uncontrollable. “Anxiety, after all, need not be rational, need not be coherent, can contain multitudes,” the author writes. “It’s possible to be anxious about things that will almost certainly never affect you; it's possible for anxiety to prevent you from accurately assessing danger and making plans to address it.”  Problematically, the sense of security many people have had in the systems, policies, processes, and procedures of the past is not the promise of the future. Everything today, in exaggeration and inaccuracy, is unsteady. Trust lies in a place the article characterizes as “more disordered, irrational and human.” Overcoming anxiety about the current national climate will be a national effort, perfectly synchronized with a nationwide initiative to raise awareness and support treatment for mental health.

From the very first drink, alcohol is different between men and women. Alcohol abuse, or binge drinking, differs for men and women. According to the National Institute of Health, binge drinking for men includes 5 drinks in a two hour sitting while binge drinking for women is about 4. Men and women’s bodies, metabolisms, and psychologies are different in general. For alcohol, the primary genders can act differently in the way that they create alcohol dependency in the brain. Healio reports that new research from Massachusetts has found a significant difference in the reward system of the brain as it relates to alcoholism in both males and females. “Analyses indicated a significant gender interaction in the association between alcoholism and total reward network volumes,” the article explains, “with smaller reward volumes among men with alcoholism vs. male controls and larger reward volumes among women with alcoholism vs. female controls.” In simple terms, they found that the male alcoholic brain has a smaller volume of reward compared to the female. Compared to other interesting findings which have surfaced recently, this is of little surprise. Statistically, women have always drank less than men and have been less diagnosed with alcohol related disorders. Even at the time Alcoholics Anonymous, the world famous 12 step program, was founded, female alcoholics were few and far between. The primary text for the group, Alcoholics Anonymous, was written for men by men with little mention of women who were not the wives of male alcoholics. A brief paragraph describes that female alcoholics do exist, “Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years. Certain drinkers, who would be greatly insulted if called alcoholics, are astonished at their inability to stop.” Reports have revealed that the gender gap between male and female alcoholics is rapidly closing. Women are drinking more than men and more than they ever have before, leading to higher rates of alcoholism in females. The reasons why men and women drink alcoholically may differ on the surface- for example, women might be more emotional drinkers whereas men drink to relieve work-oriented stress. However, as many alcoholics in recovery  find, it is not the differences but the similarities which matter. Finding pleasure in the effects of alcohol and developing a chemical dependency upon it is the root of all alcoholism. Everything else is a matter of detail.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a mental health condition characterized by distraction, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. The high quality of impulsivity and restlessness is a risk factor for developing a substance use disorder later on in life. Many adults and young people with a substance use disorder are diagnosed with ADHD when they are admitted for treatment. Never having been diagnosed or treated for the condition before, their treatment for addiction tends to have greater success as treating the ADHD significantly influences recovery from addiction. A new study from researchers in Brazil looked at the connections between ADHD and addiction in patients currently in treatment. Important factors included in the analysis were:

Called “legal weed” “synthetic weed” or more technically named “cannabinoid alternative” synthetic marijuana types have gained popularity as well as notoriety in recent years. Clusters of overdoses, isolated overdose events, and chronic addiction has resulted from the widespread availability of synthetic marijuana. Perhaps the most striking difference between synthetic and normal marijuana is the overdose. To date, there are no reported overdoses on marijuana. Marijuana can cause a disruptive impairment of judgment and perception which can lead to accidental deaths. Compared to synthetic marijuana, the effects are minimal. Like other synthetic drugs, the chemical formula of synthetic marijuana is easy to manipulate. As a result, it is challenging for government agencies and law officials to stay ahead of the drug. Regularly adding forms of synthetic marijuana to the list of officially banned substances is helpful, but does not eliminate the problem. Sold as “natural” home products like potpourri and incense, synthetic marijuana is advertised as having natural elements, though it contains few. Instead, the harsh concoctions of chemicals can lead to severe side effects including heart failure, seizure, intense hallucination, and episodes of psychosis. These side effects mirror many other synthetic drugs, yet are more common in synthetic marijuana. According to data released in the Global Drug Survey of last year, 2016, synthetic marijuana will lead to more emergency room medical treatments than any other drug. Considering the recent devastating effects of volatile synthetic drugs like Flakka, Krokodil, and crystal meth, that makes synthetic marijuana a dangerous substance. Why Is Synthetic Marijuana Addicting? Regularly experiencing psychosis, seizure, hospitalization, and other severely adverse effects might not sound like an appealing draw to synthetic marijuana. However, many become extremely addicted to the drug. Any synthetic substance creates a powerful surge of dopamine, the neurotransmitter in the brain which sends signals of pleasure to other areas of the brain. Quickly, the brain develops a tolerance and a dependency on the drug. It does not take many uses of synthetic marijuana for addiction to develop.

For many years borderline personality disorder was misdiagnosed and mistreated. As one of the most difficult personality disorders to diagnose, creating the right treatment plan for borderline can be challenging. However, recovery is possible. Today, there are proven treatment methods for: