A 5-Step Strategy to Mental Health Challenges: Recommendations for my Younger Self

BY JASON PARK

I was struck by bipolar disorder at twenty-three, and I did not regain my balance until I reached forty-three. What I would give to reclaim those twenty lost years! But my path to recovery now lies in helping others who are in the beginnings of mental health challenges, by offering them support that could help avoid or lessen the suffering they encounter. Here are five things that helped me:

Therapy

Offering my honest, open input to a skilled therapist, would have helped me achieve direction sooner in life. Therapists typically use a number of techniques with patients. One is Freudian psychodynamic, which views mental health conditions as a result of traumas in childhood and brings conscious light to those traumas as a way to support mental health. The cognitive-behavioral model involves the patient’s thoughts being re-conditioned so that ruts in thinking are avoided and changed. The humanistic-existential model requires patients to see themselves as having a special purpose in life or having a requirement to live up to their potential. When you study these methods with your therapist, your life becomes a significance-laden journey, not a road full of aimless wandering.

Medication

These days, a lot of people are placed on medication. While I did not like taking psychotropic medication, at least in the beginning, I realized I was a serious case and if I did not take significant steps, I would likely be hospitalized. So when you tell the psychiatrist exactly what you’re feeling and experiencing, he or she will be able to help you find the right mix of medication that allows you to feel better, and continue to function in society. Medication is vital to my flourishing, my prescription enables me to feel buoyant, happy, easygoing and helpful.

Work

Without a job or a career, it is almost impossible to afford therapy, medication, health insurance, rent/mortgage, vehicle/car payments, etc. The kind of stress that work provides is usually “good” stress because it is often productive. The innate dignity of work transcends industry or trade. Whether as a professor, which I was at one time, or as a telemarketer, which I was at another, one’s professional goals and achievements are a large part of one’s identity. 

Support Groups

With the existence of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) and The Stability Network (TSN), you can readily have a place to share your thoughts, feelings and experiences without the formal structure of an office visit with a therapist or a psychiatrist. At these support group meetings, you can talk about things for which there was no time for sharing in sessions with professionals. Support group meetings also provide additional structure outside the therapist’s or psychiatrist’s office. And you may be able to talk about things that cannot be brought up with the therapist or the doctor.

Hobbies

For me, in college, hobbies such as being a jazz radio DJ and a starting lacrosse player, plus majoring in philosophy got me through Harvard. Hobbies, or in other words, your personal interests, involve something that is important to you. They bring meaning to life. Hobbies can include following professional sports, collecting stamps and performing chamber music. For those of us who are lucky enough to make careers out of our hobbies—which means liking what you do for work and being good at what you do—there is no disconnect between liking and doing. With these extracurricular activities as part of your life balance, you can go on in the face of the adversity caused by mental ill-health. Even if your hobbies remain a sideline activity and are not your job, they still can provide structure and meaning that helps to manage mental health challenges and feel that life is worth living.

At an event I attended sponsored by the NAMI’s San Fernando Valley chapter, an eminent psychiatrist said that our knowledge of the brain these days is equivalent to our knowledge of the heart in the 1880s. In other words, we have a long way to go. But we have many ways that are proven to counter mental health challenges—including these five steps that helped me.  Although my strategy is just one of many paths, I encourage you to never give up on finding a process that works for you. Godspeed!

Dr. Jason Park earned his BA with honors in philosophy from Harvard University and his PhD in strategic management from the University of Pittsburgh. He was a professor in Hong Kong first before returning to the U.S. to teach at the University of Southern California. He is now a writer. In his free time, he volunteers for The Stability Network, the Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.