Turning 40: Notes to My Younger Self. #10 Mental Health is Just Health

#10. Mental Health is Just Health

In the ICU we tend to focus on multi-organ system failure. We think about respiratory failure when one is on the ventilator, renal failure when one has to have interventions for fluid removal, cardiac failure when one is hypotensive, endocrine failure when one is hyper or hypoglycemic, skin failure when one has pressure ulcers.

Many years ago, when we were a very young and incredibly naive Nurse Practitioner, we would often round with a psychiatrist in the ICU. She was mature and wise and we always tended to learn something from her. One day as we were talking about multi-organ system failure, she stated that the patient had five systems failing. Confused, as we could only identify four, we asked what the fifth one was. She smiled. Neuro, she said, the patient was not on any sedation and had been unresponsive for some time.

It struck me that day how much I had never really appreciated the neurologic system in the same way as the others. I did when someone had a stroke or an aneurysm or a tumor or dementia. But not when they had "mental" changes: confusion, lethargy, stupor, unconsciousness, depression.

Mental health is just a part of health. It is like the skin and the kidneys and the heart.

We think with our head, though, so we think we can control it. We tend to think we are responsible for our emotions, for our affect. We think we can control our sorrow, our happiness. We get angry and frustrated when we can not.

I never remember a time when I was frustrated by my inability to control my blood sugar levels.

I never remember a time when I was frustrated that I could not control the response of my taste buds.

I never remember a time when I was frustrated that I could not make my kidneys stop making urine.

I can not control my mental health any more than I can control any other system. Our neurologic system is a system just like all the others.

As life trials come and you feel overwhelmed and feel flooded with emotion and you have a hard time making sense of it all, remember that mental health is just a part of health.

Work to take care of you, all of you.