Stress is a natural way in which our mind and body responds to a challenge, and when it’s out of control and constant it wreaks havoc on mental health. Stress can have a huge impact on emotional well being from feeling anxious and depressed to longer term psychological effects. To offer a solution to stress we need to know how it causes mental health issues. If stress is impacting your mental health, here’s a look at the wide range of ways it does that and how to cope.
1. Increased Anxiety and Worry
Stress is one of the most immediate ways stress affects mental health — it makes you more anxious. If you are under pressure, your body’s fight or flight response kicks in, resulting in the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. This response is useful up to a point, but chronic stress keeps the body on high alert, meaning worry and feelings of unease are always happening. Eventually, this can lead to generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or panic attacks, very much occupying your days.
2. Risk of Depression
However, if a person is exposed to stress for a long period of time, the person can develop depression. Stressful events like relationship problems, financial stress, or job stresses can drain your brain neurotransmitters, like serotonin and dopamine, which helps regulate your moods. Left unchecked, stress can lead to feeling hopeless, helpless and sad, or losing interest in things you once liked to do. Depression caused by stress is often cyclical, because emotional exhaustion by depression can itself make stress worse. You should never ignore depression. It is advised to visit your psychiatrist for support.
3. Cognitive Impairment
Long term stress can also damage areas of your brain which control your ability to focus, concentrate, and remember. Stress hits certain areas of the brain responsible for memory and decision making hard, the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (also known as the decision making center). People who are stressed can also find they’re having problems making decisions and solving problems or even remembering things. This cognitive fog results in decreased productivity in the workplace or the school and frustration and irritability, which in turn contributes to mental distress.
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4. Emotional Instability
People who are under stress tend to have unstable emotions, and become moody and grouchy. Stress makes people react more, striking out at others, being easily aggravated by minor annoyances. Chronic irritability and emotional volatility can damage relationships, personal and professional, and can make you feel more alone and lonely.
See also: The Impact of Stress on Mental Health
5. Sleep Disruptions
Stress usually stops people from getting a good night of sleep, resulting in insomnia or restless sleep. Finally, lack of sleep worsens mental health by robbing you of the ability to manage your emotions, making it harder to stay calm and face daily challenges as well as creating greater anxiety. Stress can disrupt sleep and poor sleep in turn can worsen stress levels, and it becomes a vicious cycle that goes on until the individual becomes fatigued until they can’t continue and burn out.
6. Social Withdrawal and Isolation
Withdrawal from social activities and personal relationships is associated with stress. Stress induced mental fatigue and emotional burden might drive a person to keep himself isolated from friends as well as family for instance if the person feels too heavy for such interactions. This makes it all the worse because isolation can lead to greater feelings of loneliness and alienation, negatively affects your mental health and increases the chances that you can become depressed.
Final Thoughts
If left unchecked, stress can take a serious toll on mental health leading to anxiety, depression and cognitive attention deficits. Stress has harmful effects; understanding how it affects us and learning effective coping mechanisms will help us survive and cope with it. Coming up with healthy lifestyle changes can help to manage stress and improve mental wellbeing. And if you can’t already, it is important to seek help from a psychiatrist in Karachi as they can help you navigate your thoughts and emotions.
