This section of the Toolkit includes tips and strategies for adopting a healthy lifestyle, managing your mood, and staying healthy.
The steps you take and the decisions you make in your daily life related to your nutrition, sleep, exercise, relationships, etc. will help determine how well you respond to treatment and maintain your mental health.
This section of the Toolkit includes:
Depression can often leave people feeling out of control or pessimistic about the future. The following strategies can help you gain a greater sense of control over the decisions and actions that impact your health.
The treatment plan you and your healthcare provider develop may include medication, therapy, and lifestyle changes, by themselves or in combination, to manage your symptoms. Your job is to make sure you understand the plan, and to stick with it.
Even when depression (or another mental illness) is diagnosed and treated successfully, it can still return over time. It is important to view a mental illness as a condition that requires ongoing care and attention over a lifetime – not as a single episode to be addressed and forgotten.
No matter where you are on your mental health journey, working toward specific goals can help you live the life you want while managing your mental illness.
While treating depression or another mental illness will generally require professional intervention, you’re the expert when it comes to self-care, the process of forming healthy habits and making positive changes to your daily routine to improve your emotional and physical health.
In order to manage your illness, it’s helpful to incorporate self-help strategies into your daily life.
eHealth is the use of technologies such as online psychotherapy, informational websites, social media, forums, blogs, and video games to educate, provide social support, encourage screening for disorders, offer self-help strategies and psychotherapy, and reduce stigma.
When is it a good idea to talk to someone about your illness? How do you begin the conversation? There are no easy or “right” answers to these questions. Each situation may require a different strategy.
It’s important not to deal with depression entirely on your own. You need a support system of caring people--family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors-- who make it easy for you to be yourself.
It can be challenging to function at your best in the work world while dealing with depression or another mental health condition. But when you play an active role in your own treatment plan, you will find it easier to support your mental health and bring out your very best at work.