Taking a Break

Taking the time to relax away from work and the worries of everyday life can help to reduce stress and anxiety and improve your overall mental well-being. Even is you don't feel stressed, taking time out to relax is still important.

Taking a break doesn't necessarily mean you have to go on holiday abroad. Even just a 5-minute rest can help.

Go for a walk at lunchtime
Learn some breathing exercises and meditation to help you to relax
Take 5 minutes away from the task or activity you are doing
Take allocated breaks and holidays day in the workplace
Ask for more flexible working hours if necessary

Drugs and Alcohol

Drugs and alcohol are able to cause physical and mental health problems. In fact, all recreational drugs have some effect on your mental health: they affect the way you see things, your behaviour and your mood.

Continuous drug usage can lead to long term mental health problems such as depression and schizophrenia.

Alcohol is also a drug as well as being a depressant. This means that it has the ability to slow brain function, lower blood pressure, cause fatigue, impair judgement and trigger irritable and paranoid thoughts. In turn, this can lead to depression, addiction, anxiety and delirium as the person becomes dependent on it.

Even if you consume alcohol in low amounts, it still acts as a depressant and can affect the way you feel. Alcohol may appear to have positive effects at first but in the long term, it can cause serious mental health problems.

Stopping or reducing your alcohol intake, as well as avoiding tobacco and recreational drugs, is key to improving well-being.

Medication

With mental health problems, psychiatric medication may need to be prescribed by the doctor, such as antidepressants, anti-psychotics, mood stabilisers or sleeping pills.

Although medication can't cure a mental health problem, it simply helps to reduce the symptoms or help you to cope with them better.

Medication is not prescribed to everyone with a mental health problem and is certainly not a necessity. It's up to the individual whether they choose to take it and how long they take it for - if you are taking medication you always have the right to change your mind and stop.

Furthermore, after a few months on the medication, you may find that your symptoms improve enough for you to stop taking it. This is a personal decision to make but you must ensure you speak to your GP before you stop taking it.

Recovery

The good news is that it's possible to recover from a mental health illness in the same way you would recover from a physical illness. However, there is no typical duration and some people can experience mental health illnesses for weeks, months or years.

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People cannot just 'snap out of it' when talking about mental health problems or 'go back to normal'. People make assumptions on mental health problems and assume that people can 'snap out of it' or 'go back to normal', this is unfair and are often due to a lack of understanding.

Recovery can be very personal and is a process that takes time.

It's also something that you need to achieve for yourself. Taking their time to accept that the illness is part of who you allow you to gain control over it and work towards recovering.