By Mohab Hanna, MD Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
Founder, MedPsych Behavioral Health
MedPsych is a psychiatry practice focusing on the mental health and psychiatric needs of children, teenagers and adults. One of the more underappreciated aspects of mental health is the role of stress, anxiety and depression on our physical health. In other words, psychological and emotional struggles are not isolated problems that only impact certain aspects of our lives.
There are tons of research studies and data on the negative consequences of untreated anxiety and depression on our abilities to function optimally. This is true for kids, adolescents and adults of all ages. The impairment of function runs across all the different areas of our lives- educational/school, work/vocation, and everyday life tasks like managing a home, relationships or managing our finances. If you ever struggled with Major Depression even in a mild form and certainly in the moderate to severe form, you know how much it negatively gets in the way of your life. In some ways, your life stops and your ability to navigate every aspect of your life becomes much more challenging and difficult and at times it stops completely. That type of negative impact is very clear to most people and is obvious enough to warrant seeking psychiatric care.
As a psychiatrist who has had the opportunity to see thousands of patients in North Jersey/Bergen County, I have seen so many patients initially start their process by going to the primary care doctors with many different types of physical complaints. For example, gastrointestinal issues like stomach aches, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The patient gets an extensive medical work-up and gets diagnosed with something like irritable bowel syndrome and is put on some sort of medication regimen. That patient eventually ends up seeing us at MedPsych coming in with complaints of anxiety and stress that have been there all along. It is common for us to see that the gastrointestinal issues (GI) were actually being caused by an underlying anxiety disorder and that actually treating the anxiety disorder alleviates the underlying gastrointestinal symptoms resulting in not needing the medications being used to treat the GI issues. The take-away here is that underlying mental health issues in the form of anxiety have a significant impact on every part of our physical health. Mental and emotional aspects of our bodies are not disconnected from our physical bodies.
I know this is a very simplistic way of looking at it, but GI symptoms are just one example of this. We see the same thing with cardiac symptoms such as chest pain, heart racing, and dizziness as well as neurological symptoms such as headaches or tics or even frequent pain and muscle tension resulting in pain medications and physical therapy. The main point is that mental health and emotional health play a large role in how well our bodies function as well as in our overall physical health. We know from much research that Major Depressive Disorder can increase someone’s risks for many serious and chronic medical illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. We also know that underlying stress and anxiety play a large role in creating excessive inflammation which is an underlying driver of many chronic illnesses. For example, Cortisol, which is the main stress hormone that is secreted in our body, can negatively affect our immune system and its ability to respond to infections. That is just one example of how stress has a large negative impact on many different aspects of our physical health. Another way that stress can negatively impact our physical wellbeing is through Cytokines which are these chemicals that our triggered when we are stressed out. These cytokines also cause an inflammatory response and can have an underlying role in chronic illness. These are just a small sampling of examples highlighting the importance of addressing underlying mental health and psychiatric issues for our physical health and wellbeing.
MedPsych Behavioral Health provides psychiatric evaluations and a range of treatment services for conditions such as anxiety and depression. If you would like a free consultation on our services, you can call us or email us at [email protected].
