Are you feeling unwell or having a hard time right now?
Here’s a quick guide for you to help find the right kind of help you need
When to seek for help?
Everyone has their pitfalls. It is really nothing to be ashamed of. However, seeking help for our concerns is often a challenge. How do we know if we need to seek help? A good rule of thumb for consider is if you are starting to notice decrease in:
- Your ability to cope with day to day demands
- Your ability to perform well in work or school
- Your ability to enjoy life and feel satisfied
- Your ability to form and maintain relationships
- Your self-esteem or sense of self worth
How do I know if my concern is a mental health concern?
These changes may occur at different points in our lives, and it is often confusing as to why these are happening. A good way to determine this is to first note how much the concern is affecting you. Try to see if the concern has started to affect your day to day functioning, your relationships, or your overall wellbeing. These may include noting changes to your sleep, appetite, motivation, focus. Mood, and energy, over the past two weeks. If you notice changes to these areas, and these do not seem to go away, it would probably be a good idea to start to seek help for these.
Where do I go to find help?
Help is available; it is just a matter of finding the right kind of help. It really goes without saying that the kind of help that we need, would really depend on the nature of the concerns we have. Though this is common sense, there is a lot more to the question of “where do I go for help” than meets the eye. The default answer to questions like these are to go to people that care about us, our friends and family are a good start. The right amount of support can make all the difference. Though sometimes, this could be difficult at times. In the absence of support, you may consider the following sources of help.
Note that the kind of help we need depends on the nature of our concern, severity and goals of the help we are seeking:
| HELP | Training and Coaching | Counseling | Psychotherapy
or Psychiatric treatment |
| CONCERN | “I need to learn a skill’ or “get better at my job”
– work or school related matters (competency, career, and human relations) development, |
“I can’t handle this on my own! it’s too overwhelming for me!”
– personal “normal” issues that are too overwhelming to handle (relationship, family, career, stress, daily demands, self-esteem)
|
“I can’t function anymore, and I feel I am at risk to myself or others”
– Persistent and dysfunctional patterns of maladaptive Thoughts, feelings, and behavior, disrupting a person’s wellbeing |
| SEVERITY | Tolerable – “I can manage it with a bit of guidance” | Difficult – “I need someone to accompany me through this – solutions are possible, but I cannot find them on my own” | Debilitating – “this has affected every aspect of my life, and me and the people around me are suffering as a result” |
| PRACTITIONER | Facilitator/Trainor – that are adept at their craft/skillset.
Professional Trainers and academics of a specific field. |
Counselor – a registered guidance counselor (RGC) or a license
Psychologist (RPsy) with trained in counseling |
Psychotherapist – a licensed clinical psychologist (RPsy) with specialized training and expertise in clinical diagnosis and treatment therapy
Psychiatrist – Medical doctor (MD) with a specialization in psychiatry – (they usually diagnose illness and prescribe medication)
|
| GOAL | Learn new skills and develop personally and professionally | Restoring wellbeing though providing the means to cope with normal concerns of day to day by enhance adjustment capacity and Enhance acceptance and providing support.
|
Restoring one’s wellbeing though providing the means to reduce and manage Symptoms of mental illness, enhance adjustment capacity and Enhance acceptance, and provide support
|
| PROCESSES | Providing direction or information, and identifying best practices of a given area | Shorter-term work focused on dealing with a specific
“difficulty in life” situations |
Long term process involving
diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, drug addiction, and severe family conflict – abnormal issues May involve a combined treatment of medication and therapy |
If you’d like one on one mental wellness support, please reach out and we can put you in touch with the right people.
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