The Mental Aspects of Disease

The Mental Aspects of Disease

Are you frequently fatigued and unable to bring up the drive to work properly as you were wont to do previously? Are you always sad and depressed and don’t have the enthusiasm to do anything about it? Do you keep getting fat even though you are semi starving yourself all the time? Are you anxious? Depressed? Eccentric? Is it time to visit a therapist? A counsellor? A psychiatrist? And talk things over?

Hold on a minute. Perish the thought that psychiatry comprises counselling primarily and counselling can cure anything. It never happens that way in real life despite the millions spent on counselling therapy by gullible people who are desperate for a cure for their symptoms and problems. Despite what counsellors would have you believe, venting out for an hour in a darkened room to a bored person who keeps interjecting soothing platitudes is not going to make your problems disappear or your diseases to cure itself. In 90% of the cases I have mentioned above you will have an as yet undiagnosed physical condition with the remaining being the interplay of your inherited genes with your environment.

If you are depressed or anxious visit a psychiatrist who can prescribe you drugs to bring your mood swings under control before you slash your wrists. Talk therapy can achieve only so much when the entire gamut of your neural messengers inside your brain are playing havoc with your individual neurons making some misfire and others to cease fire.  

If you are fatigued all the time go visit a good internist or general physician and rule out any viral diseases -for most of the times, it’s these little culprits who drain you of your energy without any obvious reasons. If still not satisfied, the next port of call should be an endocrinologist who will assess your chemical messengers from the adrenals and thyroids which have an effect on whole body wellness even in miniscule amounts. Any absence or reduction in these little proteins can lead to a whole lot of misery in everyday life.

And finally if you are desperate to lose weight and find you just can’t control your appetite don’t listen to the counsellor who says you have weak will power and over eat. They are just putting the cart before the horse and failing to diagnose the underlying physical problem which is causing you to feel hungry all the time and makes you overeat. Go visit a good endocrinologist and check out your hormone levels. Once you get them under control, your hunger pangs and mood swings will automatically disappear. Don’t blame yourself for being fat and don’t let others blame you- especially if they are taking good money off you just to listen to your failings.

Hunger is an awful thing and you are only human if you are miserable and pre-occupied with thoughts of food when you are dieting. Add to it the emotional stress of being fat- the unspoken judgment that you lack will power, the suffering from internal starvation and the constant guilt feeling when you listen to your body and indulge its wants – none of which can be cured by lying down there and talking about how you are going to make an effort henceforth. Get a blood test done before you start keeping a fancy food diary. Re-balance your hormones so that the food is burnt up to feed you and not just stored away as fat. Do the simple things, the basic things right and the larger issues (pun intended) will take care of themselves.

The mental aspects of disease are real, no one denies that. But that’s not all we are- we are an amalgamation of nerves, hormones and millions and millions of bacteria which live inside us. Any change in any one of these components can cause disease by the very imbalance the body is incapable of managing. You are not just your brain or your mood- you have an entire system of interconnected body parts and organs which, all of them, have their own agenda and look out for their own good. The loss of balance in your physical body can and does affect the brain and vice versa. It’s far easier to diagnose and treat any bodily ailments before trying to tamper with the brain. A good therapist can make you talk your fears out loud, but merely talking them out loud (and paying your therapist for that privilege) is not guaranteed to cure you once and for all. Everyone deserves to live healthy and live happily- not either or but both. So think over your options before jumping to conclusions. All the best.

P.S. this rant was triggered by too many patients professing that they undergo counselling even for blatantly physical diseases which require medications and a boot up their backsides rather than couch talk. I am not sure how these counsellors have done it, but they seem to have convinced an entire generation of idiots that they can talk their way to good health. If only.