Cultural Perspectives on Mental Health

Depression

Depression is a feeling of low mood that lasts for a long time and affects your everyday life. It can make you feel hopeless, despairing, guilty, worthless, unmotivated and exhausted. It can affect your self-esteem, sleep, appetite, sex drive and, sometimes, your physical health.

There are also some common specific forms of depression, such as:

• Postnatal depression (PND) - depression that can develop from between two weeks to up to two years after becoming a parent. It's usually diagnosed in mothers, but can affect partners too.
• Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) - depression that is related to day length and usually (but not always) occurs in the winter.

Anxiety

Anxiety refers to strong feelings of unease, worry and fear. Because occasional anxiety is a normal human experience, it's sometimes hard to know when it's becoming a mental health problem – but if your feelings of anxiety are very strong, or last for a long time, they can be overwhelming.

You might experience:

• Constant worrying about things that are a regular part of everyday life, or about things that aren't likely to happen.
• Unpleasant physical symptoms such as sleep problems, panic attacks, an increased heartbeat, an upset stomach, muscle tension or feeling shaky.
• A specific anxiety disorder, such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, a phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

OCD is a type of anxiety disorder. The term is often misused in daily conversation – for example, you might hear people talk about being 'a bit OCD', if they like things to be neat and tidy. But the reality of this disorder is a lot more complex and serious.

OCD has two main parts:

• Obsessions – intrusive thoughts, ideas or urges that repeatedly appear in your mind. For example, thinking that you have been contaminated by dirt and germs, or worrying that you might hurt someone.
• Compulsions – repetitive activities that you feel you have to do. This could be something like repeatedly washing something to make sure it's clean or repeating a specific phrase in your head to prevent harm from coming to a loved one.

Phobias

A phobia is an extreme form of fear or anxiety triggered by a particular situation (such as going outside) or object (such as spiders), even when there is no danger. A fear becomes a phobia if it lasts for more than six months, and has a significant impact on how you live your day-to-day life. For example, you may begin to organise your life around avoiding the thing that you fear.

Eating problems

Eating problems aren't just about food. They can be about difficult things in your life and painful feelings, which you may be finding hard to express, face or resolve. Focusing on food can be a way of disguising these problems, even from yourself.

The most common eating problems are:

• Anorexia – not allowing yourself to eat enough food to get the energy and nutrition you need to stay physically healthy.
• Bulimia – finding that you eat large amounts of food all in one go (bingeing); then feeling deeply guilty or ashamed, and taking steps to get rid of the food you have eaten (purging).
• Binge eating disorder – feeling that you can't stop yourself from eating, even when you want to.

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder (previously called manic depression) mainly affects your mood. With this diagnosis you are likely to have times when you experience:

• Manic or hypomanic episodes (feeling high)
• Depressive episodes (feeling low)
• Potentially some psychotic symptoms during manic or depressed episodes