Coping with stress can be a major hurdle.

Basic principles are simple to implement and there are many every day tools that we can use to help us cope with 21st century stress. Stress reduction techniques are important for the maintenance of mental health and they are a good complement to nutritional orthomolecular therapy.

Talking out problems, for example, is therapeutic and can be done easily with a close friend, family member, spouse or counsellor.  Talking out problems helps us to understand, assimulate and build a perspective on issues so we can be more content and productive in our approach to life. Understanding one another is indeed a key component to happy living. The Decency, Understanding, Support, Safety, Privacy DUSSP protocol implements the concept of understanding as one of its basic premises.

For more details on every day tools I encourage everyone to read the Canadian Mental Health Association brochure on “Coping with Stress”. This publication provides a great base for healthy stress-free living:

 

Biochemical imbalances are also important to address to help us cope with stress

Biochemical imbalances are the endogenous components that are seperate from, however highly linked to, the exogenous external stress filled environment.

The aim of our orthomolecular treatment approach is to address nutrient imbalances so we can cope with life and tolerate stress with greater ease. Depression, anxiety, ADD, OCD, and schizophrenia are conditions with specific biochemical nutrient imbalances.

 

Stress in Schizophrenia

In schizophrenia stress is processed differently. Stress responses can be partially assimilated or delayed due to medication sedation or an inability to process surrounding emotional information due to perceptual dysfunction sensory overload. I like to refer my patients to counsellors once they start improving so they can handle the stress of living life free of a ‘sick’ identity that they have attached to. This happens more often in young schizophrenics that have not had the chance to fully develop socializing skills. The retrospective schizophrenic is a schizophrenic that is improving that yearns to attach to a non-sick identity; these patients sometimes need the guidance of a counsellor to help them attach and trust a new world of sensory information that is not distorted nor disillusioning them. Orthomolecular biochemical nutrient balancing specific to schizophrenia is a precursor to putting such patients in a position of more fulminate recovery.