MANAGING MENTAL HEALTH REQUIRES HOLISTIC APPROACHES

-

 MANAGING MENTAL HEALTH REQUIRES HOLISTIC APPROACHES


Scientists call for holistic mental health care that combines physical and psychological well-being.



    

Clinicians often default to treating mental health conditions with a variety of medications. This approach, however, largely ignores the role of environment, lifestyle, and social factors. Mental health professionals must work toward a more holistic management picture, Sidarta Ribeiro, Ana Paula Pimentel, Paulo Amarante, and colleagues at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and FIOCRUZ in Brazil argue in the new open-access journal PLOS Mental Health.

More people than ever are being diagnosed with mental health conditions—particularly children and young adults. The World Health Organization estimates that mental health conditions affect at least one in eight people around the world. While pharmaceutical treatments are improving, Ribeiro and colleagues argue that psychiatry has become overmedicalized, focusing on using medicines to manage mental health. A better path, they say, involves integrating medication with a deeper understanding of all psychological and physical factors that can affect mental health.

More holistic treatment, Ribeiro and colleagues note, starts with the rights and dignity of the individual. They note that peer support models and strengthening communities can improve outcomes for people in acute mental crises. In addition, they suggest that psychiatric treatment could integrate lifestyle changes to improve sleep, nutrition, and exercise (such as yoga and Capoeira). Finally, holistic mental health management involves engaging with "inner dialogues," using approaches such as psychotherapy, art therapy, and nature exposure. Psychiatry, the scientists argue, must engage not just with the individual's biology but also with their social settings, environments, and lives as a whole.

The authors add: "Deficits in sleep, nutrition, exercise, introspection, and other pillars of good mental health do not occur in a vacuum; they are produced by how we live." It is time to strive toward a more naturalistic and benign approach to promoting mental well-being by strengthening connections to one's body, nature, and community.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learn How the NEW Nutrition Facts Label Can Help You Improve Your Health

-
Image
  Learn How the NEW Nutrition Facts Label Can Help You Improve Your Health The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued new regulations changing the  Nutrition Facts  label external  icon  on packaged foods. This is the first major change to the label since it was introduced in 1994. The changes are based on updated science, the most  recent dietary  recommendations, external  icon , and public input. Using the new label can help you choose foods for a healthy diet. The label will be required on all packaged foods made in the United States and imported from other countries. The new label is already appearing on packages. Most items will have the new label by January 1, 2021. What is changing? Calories & Fat Larger, darker letters make calories the easiest item to see on the new label. When it comes to health outcomes, the type of fat you eat matters more than the overall amount of fat. For this reason, the label will no longer show the per...
Read more

MUSCLES EXERCISING POWERS NEURON GROWTH AND REPAIR

-
Image
  MUSCLES EXERCISING POWERS NEURON GROWTH AND REPAIR The findings suggest that biochemicals released during exercise and the physical effects of exercise could help heal nerves. Exercise is good for the body. Regular activity strengthens muscles and can strengthen bones, blood vessels, and the immune system. Now, MIT engineers have found that exercise can also have benefits at the level of individual neurons. They observed that muscles contract during exercise and release biochemical signals called myokines. In these muscle-generated signals, neurons grew four times further than neurons not exposed to myokines. These cellular-level experiments suggest that exercise can have a significant biochemical effect on nerve growth. Surprisingly, the researchers also found that neurons respond to the biochemical signals of exercise and its physical impacts. The team observed that when neurons are repeatedly pulled back and forth, similar to how muscles contract and expand during trainin...
Read more

CANNABIS, THE PHANTOM MENACE, MORE DANGEROUS THAN IMAGINED

-
Image
  CANNABIS, THE PHANTOM MENACE, MORE DANGEROUS THAN IMAGINED  Scientists have known for some time that cannabis use has deleterious effects on health long-term. The evidence keeps piling up of how dangerous this drug can be.  A recent study conducted at McGill University showed how cannabis increases the risks of psychosis. These are just the latest concerns, as cannabis has also been implicated in increasing heart attacks and stroke risks, according to a study of 430,000 adults conducted by the American Heart Association. According to findings at McGill University, Young adults at risk of psychosis show reduced brain connectivity, a deficit that cannabis use appears to worsen. In the first-of-its-kind study, McGill University researchers detected a marked decrease in synaptic density -- the connections between neurons that enable brain communication -- in indivi...
Read more