Mental health issues can interfere with your normal day-to-day life. Healing from your mental health issues can take some time, so it is important to find ways to handle these issues. Ways to handle mental health issues besides medication are to stay active, develop coping mechanisms, and improve your diet.
Stay Active
Staying active can help alleviate the symptoms you feel with mental health issues. Staying active doesn’t mean vigorous or intense exercise, it just means getting up and doing some low to moderate intensity exercise each day. This could be something as simple as going for a walk. Exercise and staying active is shown to help improve not only fitness but can improve your mood because of the endorphins released. Getting outside in fresh air and sunshine can also help. Sometimes it can be hard to get started so you can ask a friend to help you get going and start small.
Develop Coping Mechanisms
Coping mechanisms can be a big help in managing your mental health issues. Coping mechanisms can help you to function normally and deal with challenges that come with life. It can be tempting to engage in behaviors that offer temporary relief, however those can cause more problems long-term. These include avoidant style coping such as escaping, self-soothing with food or substances, or risk taking. Some helpful coping mechanisms include medication, time management, building a support system, or journaling. If you’re religious, prayer may help you connect to a higher power while you’re struggling.
Improve Your diet
While your diet is not a cure-all, making improvements in your nutrition can help to improve your mental health. Foods that don’t help mental health issues are highly processed foods, foods high in sugar, caffeinated beverages, and alcohol. Including more whole foods, reducing sugar and processed foods can help you feel overall better and help you get more nutrients that can play a role in improving your mental health. There is also a link of the gut bacteria on mental health which is why it is also important to include foods rich in probiotics.
Your mental health issues are not a result of your own failings. However, there are things that can help you handle it. Being functional is important so making small changes to cope and increase your health overall will help you to manage your mental health so you can live life.
Check out this article on how nutrition impacts your mental health!
