MENTAL* HEALTH MENACE : PRIME PRECIS

IN MY PRACTICE - I routinely see patients who have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety by one clinician, bipolar disorder by another and post traumatic stress disorder by a third at different points in their lives.

They arrive confused and frustrated, asking : What disorder do I really have ?

The honest answer is : all of them and none of them. Each of these labels can capture something useful and inform treatment options, but none of them do justice to the dimensional and dynamic nature of mental illness.

YOUR mental health problems are not caused by a simple thing that you either have or don't have.

They are patterns shaped by who we are as people and that, in turn, shape the people we become.

This is a more complicated story than '' chemical imbalance '' or '' brain disease.'' But it is closer to the truth.

And an honest story is what you need to make sense of what is happening to you and to find your way through it.

!WOW! thanks Awais Aftab, who is a psychiatrist who runs the newsletter Psychiatry at the Margins.