7 Warning Signs You Need a Mental Wellness Check

How good are you at recognizing early signs that your mental health is slipping? It’s very hard to pull yourself out of a hole when you bottom out from depression. It’s much easier to change your course if you haven’t gotten too low. Here’s are some relatively common signs that your mental health is going downward.

WANT TO START IN THERAPY? Here’s a convenient and affordable option with my sponsor BetterHelp

For a monthly fee, you get a REAL licensed therapist with whom you can meet weekly by phone, video or chat. You can also send daily messages.

Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.

[tayzonday]

Sometimes I swear Dr. Marks has eyes in my walls.

[tmlawson]

1. Not bathing regularly (guilt adds to misery, despite not having energy to do it)
2. Not brushing teeth (just an extra step, too much energy to do)
3. Super cluttered surroundings
4. Lose track of time, doing nothing (psychomotor slowing), staring into space, leads to being overwhelmed by catching up
5. Feeling strong emotions under the surface (tears falling at any time, feeling fragile, or angry or rageful) that don't match the situation
6. Isolation from others because of the deep unhappiness from inside
7. Feeling exhausted and sleepy, even after waking up from a night of rest

And yes, this also happens when you are unmedicated bipolar, not just medically depressed.

[Ryan-mwpm]

I have poor hygiene and I don't brush my teeth, my room is a mess and I feel trapped in a constant dopamine cycle that I can't break. Thank you for this video and helping me become more aware of what I have become.

[ran]

As someone who’ve spiraled into depression a lot of times, i notice these signs leading to that. I’m scared to spiral again so I’ve developed a routine that i follow every single day except for a few exceptions with valid reasons. After i wake up in the morning, i pee, make my bed, brush my hair, wash and refill water bottle, drink water, brush my teeth, do yoga, meditate and take a bath. In the evening before bed, i brush my hair, take a half bath, floss, brush my teeth and journal. I make sure that i follow this routine everyday because i know that it’s going to help me keep going when I’m starting to spiral. And most times, this routine prevents me from spiraling. Sometimes, it takes me late to do them but the most important thing is that I still did them. Taking care of myself and my hygiene is the most basic thing i can do for my own self and this has helped me a lot with not spiraling into depression. I still feel depressed from time to time but i don’t get depressed for longer periods now. I’ve started following this routine in 2020 but almost at the end, some things happened and i spiraled into depression. I followed that routine for eight months before it got disrupted and I hadn’t had a major episode of depression during that time. I struggled to restart following that routine after and i’ve failed to restart it a lot of times last year and early this year but i succeeded in restarting it again this year. I’ve been doing it for over seven months now and i haven’t experienced major episode since then.

[Selah_Soul]

Whew. I am experiencing all of this. Just scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist. This came right on time. Thank you ❤️

[SocialNomad]

I definitely recognize cluttered surroundings as a sign, when I'm stress the cleaning of my room is usually the first thing I stop doing.

[happynjoyousnfree]

I played this video for my addiction recovery group, and they all said that this is what their active addiction looked like. We had a great discussion! I asked why they think that depression looks like active addiction and they said that "no one's happy in addiction." Thanks so much for ALL of these videos! Love the practical advice: sleep well, eat well, and exercise. Just awesome stuff!

[wootlesswocks]

I have PTSD, anxiety, and major depressive disorder. Exercise is one of the things that makes living tolerable. It also helps me realize how fortunate I am to be able-bodied, and appreciate my body for all the things it does for me.

[dr.braxygilkeycruises]

This video scared me. Number 3 was literally EVERYTHING going on with me right now. I am beyond depressed and things are getting worse. Thank you Dr. Tracey! You save lives with your videos.

[NETTY]

Wow....this is a wake up call for me. All I have to do now is find the strength to start🤷🏾‍♀️

[simplementexenia]

I’m bipolar and I instantly know that depression is coming when the quality of my sleep goes down and I start to shower once in 4 days even though I can still feel really good emotionally. You can teach yourself to track those things if you have some sort of recurrent mental health issues. It helps to catch it and do something about it till it gets worse

[corylcreates]

My sleep has a domino effect on the rest of my wellness. Same with the time of day I wake up. Sleeping in until 10am seems like a luxury to many people, but getting up before 8am has improved my wellness markedly.

[mudswallow]

I wonder why those depression assessment questionnaires don't ask about things like how many times you brushed your teeth last week instead of super subjective stuff like how many days you felt bad about yourself last week. I always feel like the questionnaires don't capture what's going on, but you capture the scary, tangible issues related to inability to function here. All of the things you mentioned apply to me except the emotions one - I don't have emotions when my depression is at its worst.

[AeriaGlris]

Several of these applied to me a few months ago. Not exactly sure what changed, but for a while I have been doing better. I'm going to try and use these signs as a sort of checklist in the future so I can know when I need to change something to help my mental health.

[noahpehowic]

I'm not at this low of a point in my depression, but I know I have it. It causes me to sympathize greatly for people who have it worse than me, and I cannot imagine how it must feel for people who are at that point. I feel like I'm in a fairly dark place, so it's terrifying to imagine what it's like to be at a worse mental point.

[rilindshehu]

I have all of these symptoms except the teeth one, and I ALSO have low thyroid and low vitamin D. Somehow I've been getting through most of my life like this and a lot of it has been "normalized" for me. Learning about these things has shown me that I'm missing out on things and that I have a lot to look forward to with my health.

[xorbe]

This video embodies a hidden societal problem ... it implies that we need to be busy 24/7 just to keep up. Maybe society in general adds to the problem, human minds and bodies aren't really intended to deliver peak performance every waking moment. Yeah I isolated myself from most of the people that were around me, tired of busting my butt working hard with "friends/family" demanding I fix their problems too, naw dawg, no more of that. Gosh they got angry when I stopped jumping on demand, blocked blocked and blocked.

[ronvalley]

I love how you do the graphics with your face on the tv sets, that is so cool, dang, I'm 67 and have no idea how that is accomplished. Excellent video too!

[markvega]

Physical activity definitely helps me out. It got me out of my depressive Rut during the 2020-2021 shutdowns and I practice being active religiously now. I'm a case manager in mental health and incorporate physical activities with my clients in rehab. However it's still difficult because of the poor food these clients consume. It's like prison food and our agency doesn't have or get enough funds from DMH to subsidize healthier meals. I feel like I'm doing what I can to prevent these people from getting any worse than where they're at. It's very sad and unfortunate that people still live under conditions like this while undergoing treatment. :/

[roanoak]

I'm on a study abroad and I've been away from my family for almost a whole semester now and it's been difficult, not to mention I'm feeling stressed with school and I'm trying to help my parents with some business ideas while being half a world away. But I thought I was doing pretty good at managing my depression, anxiety, and my ADHD. But listening to this video I realize I'm actually hitting every one of these marks, I think it's time to review my mental health and try to figure out how to prioritize my mental health a bit. Still all the things I should do I just feel too tired to do, it's always the things that make you better in the long term that can feel so impossible in the short term. But I'll keep working hard.^^