Mental health cannot be ignored

Parents who are often close to and talk to their children will help the child grow up with a stable health and psychological state. In the photo: Many children are brought by their parents to the Provincial Children's House to play during the Mid-Autumn Festival 2022

On the morning of October 19, Hai Duong Mental Hospital received patient CVN (16 years old, from Ninh Giang) with symptoms of psychological trauma. Persistently using psychological treatments, the doctors here have found the reason why N. fell into this state. N. is the youngest child in a family of two siblings. Because his father and older brother are both abroad, at home only his mother and N. live together. His mother is busy with work so she often lets N. take care of herself and her studies. The long-term dull life has caused N. to fall into a state of endogenous depression without her knowing. The danger is that when confiding in the doctor, N. also said that she was thinking about committing suicide.

“Before, he was still normal, but recently he has become quiet, less talkative, afraid to communicate, and has trouble sleeping. Luckily, someone gave him advice so the family was able to prevent bad things from happening,” said N.’s family.

Ms. NTTh. in Hai Duong City has also just undergone a long course of psychological treatment after divorce. Ms. Th. said that she and her husband used to live happily, the family was not rich but had enough to eat, the children were good at school and well-behaved. But then one day her husband got involved in gambling and refused to work. The family's economy gradually collapsed. The family ran out of money, so her husband borrowed money from outside with "exorbitant" daily interest rates to gamble. The debt piled up, people came to the house every day to ask for money, combined with the pressure of work and children, causing Ms. Th. to fall into depression.

“My husband is always away, and whenever he comes home he quarrels. I have insomnia and cannot complete my work at the company. When I am alone and bored, I pull out my hair without consciously controlling it,” Ms. Th. shared.

People in the province certainly have not forgotten the heartbreaking suicides of two young men in Hai Duong City and Ninh Giang District; the case of a mother in Cam Giang who jumped into the Thai Binh River with her two children. Some children in Tu Ky and Nam Sach Districts ran away from home. Many healthy people who communicated normally became depressed and did not want to communicate... Doctor Nguyen Viet Hoa, Director of Hai Duong Mental Hospital, said that these people all showed signs of "mental breakdown" or psychological trauma, mental trauma (called stress in English). The events that happened were the resonance of boredom, anxiety, fear... for a long time but could not find a way out.

Dr. Hoa believes that society is drowning in an “ocean of trauma,” and anyone can suffer from “mental breakdown.” Most people are able to adapt when they know how to overcome adversity. But there are also some patients who do not know how to escape their current situation. The reason why many people’s mental health falls into this state is because their lives are at a standstill, and they are under a lot of pressure and unresolved conflicts at the same time.

"There are patients who, when asked by doctors, are found to be affected by dozens of different psychological traumas," said Dr. Hoa.

Combining two therapies

When mental health is unstable, patients will experience common symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, fatigue, weakness, depression, and even worse, death. According to doctors, these patients must be treated with a combination of two therapies: medication and psychology, in which psychology plays the most important role. Each patient has a separate treatment. To avoid heartbreaking incidents, family members must monitor each other. When discovering that a healthy member has unusual symptoms, they need to immediately go to a medical facility for examination, screening, and treatment.

According to psychological experts, life always creates many conflicts and pressures from relationships such as between parents and children, husband and wife, between employees and leaders... To maintain a stable mental state, each person should build a gentle way of behaving with everyone around them. Know how to listen, understand, sympathize and especially boldly express your thoughts to relatives, friends and colleagues. Building a healthy lifestyle, a diet and regular exercise every day will create a refreshing life, reduce stress and fatigue. Each person in the family also needs to be responsible for improving relationships with relatives by regularly caring and asking about work, study and needs. Try to spend more time together, especially having family meals regularly to create a cozy atmosphere... If life unfortunately encounters adversity, each person needs to know how to stand up resiliently and find the most suitable solution for themselves.

Maintaining an optimistic, confident, life-loving spirit, a healthy lifestyle, knowing how to listen and understand will help each person have the best physical and mental condition to live responsibly with family and society.

DAWN