You’ve been feeling awful lately, and you can’t figure out a reason why. Maybe it’s your head, or your joints, or digestive issues, or some combination of all three and more. Your calendar used to be filled with fun activities, but now it’s all doctors appointments and empty space. You spend your evenings at home on the couch and your mornings in bed, skipping the gym. Friends invite you out, but you try not to really commit to anything, because you’re worried you’ll be too tired.
Maybe your care team has already run a battery of tests and ruled out an autoimmune condition; they can’t find any evidence of chronic disease. However, your symptoms keep getting worse and worse, and, if you’ve taken medications, they’ve barely made a dent. There could be another reason you’re feeling so lousy — one that many physicians may overlook. Here are some signs your physical health issues could actually be signs your mental health needs attention.
Your Head Hurts
There are a lot of different reasons you might get frequent headaches or migraines — anything from hormone fluctuations to caffeine withdrawal to dehydration. In some cases, they also might be a symptom of something more serious, like an aneurysm, stroke, brain tumor, meningitis, or carotid artery dissection. If you are prone to frequent headaches and you’ve been having more than usual, first see a doctor to rule out anything potentially dangerous.
That said, most headaches aren’t an indicator of anything more concerning, at least physiologically speaking. However, they can still be a sign that your mental health is on a downward slope. Stress causes tension, which can lead to chronic headaches, as well as tension in the neck and shoulders. If you’re having chronic headaches and they’re becoming unbearable, a visit to an anxiety and depression treatment center might help more than a hospital.
You’re Tired All the Time
If you’re sleeping a lot more or a lot less than usual, that could be a sign of a worsening mental health condition. Ditto if you’re having nightmares, or waking up in the middle of the night with no explanation. Sometimes, however, there’s no change in your sleep schedule or patterns, but you still just feel plain exhausted. Several different mental health conditions can leave you feeling drained and tired, like there’s just not enough energy to make it through the day.
Sometimes, the exhaustion comes from the mental health issue itself, while other times it’s a side effect from other behaviors. If you’re on prescription meds, it could be a sign that the dosage needs adjusting or that your body needs more time to adapt. If your eating or exercise habits have changed due to your mental health, that could also be impacting your energy levels. If you’re sleepy because you’re often high or hungover, that might be an indicator of excess substance use.
Your Stomach is a Mess
Social media likes to make a big fuss about “gut health” and how everyone needs to be eating kimchi and drinking loads of kombucha. There’s some truth to that: probiotics can help promote a healthy microbiome, and may play a role in mood and mental health. The problem is that sometimes folks forget to look beyond diets and trends for answers about their digestive discomfort. Oftentimes, if you’re having gastrointestinal symptoms, something else is going on.
There is a high comorbidity (ie. a strong relationship) between psychiatric and gastrointestinal disorders. Those butterflies in your stomach might actually be harbingers of an anxiety disorder.
Of course, it’s crucial to rule out more serious issues like Crohn’s, irritable bowel disease (IBS), and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). If your doctor can’t figure out what’s causing your frequent tummy troubles, depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues could be the culprit.
Your Whole Body Hurts
Sometimes, there’s no one specific thing that hurts — you just feel sore and achy all over, when you didn’t use to. Or maybe the pain builds up in a specific area, like at the tops of your shoulders, or between your scapula. In some cases, old pains that didn’t use to bother you might start to flare up again. If an old, healed joint injury that doesn’t normally bother you suddenly starts acting up, it could be due to a variety of mental health issues.
Plus, there’s the largest organ of the body, the skin, which loves to react in times of significant stress. If you’re having unusually frequent breakouts, or breaking out in full on hives, rashes, or other skin conditions, it might be your mental health. The only way to really know for sure is to see a doctor and run some tests. After that, it might be time to consider therapy, medication, or other diagnostic and treatment options for potential mental health causes.
Getting Support
When you’re dealing with a barrage of different symptoms, it can be hard to know what to tackle first, or when. How do you know whether to see a therapist or a doctor, and whether you really need help at all? Unfortunately, it’s not always clear, and high costs can be a significant barrier to care. However, a good rule of thumb is that it’s always better to get help than to let something go untreated. When in doubt, if you have the resources, see a professional, just to be sure.
