Neither it can be seen nor it can be touched but that doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. It’s like completely transparent air, that’s why you feel it and you cannot live without it. It can make you or break you. It can bring you to melancholy or elation within a fraction of a second. The more you try to perceive with your eyes, the more it becomes invisible. There’s only one way to know it and it is to believe that it is there.
The “it” mystery that I’ve been talking about is none other than brain or mind or intellect or sense or grey matter: whatever you call it. When the mind becomes different or functions differently from the defined definition of normal behavior, it is called mental illness. In other words, a condition that causes serious disorder in a person’s thinking or behavior is defined as mental illness. Since its symptoms are completely different from the signs of cough or cancer, we cannot always figure out the kind of mental illness and its medications. We are not too far from the fact that no mental illness can be fully cured through medical pills as it also requires an individual’s effort, changes in lifestyle and thoughts, acceptance, and a certain level of consciousness. In simple words let’s regard it as more dangerous than HIV AIDS or cancer as living with mental illness is itself a hell that can make a person end their own life at any time.
My research on causes of mental disturbances
- Food
You become what you eat. The simpler it sounds, the more complex it is in reality. Foods might make your brain function more or less than necessary. When the brain has to operate more or less than its capacity, it leads to mental illness. It is proven that eating just before going to bed or eating a full stomach before sleeping causes nightmares. The reason behind this is that the brain needs to function more in order to carry out metabolism activity and hence brain waves are induced causing nightmares. The intake of foods like fried food, processed meat, refined cereals, candy, pastries, and high-fat dairy products can make the person more anxious and depressed. Foods like chicken, egg, milk, fruits, and vegetables release more serotonin in the brain and one can vividly remember their dreams. Serotonin is a feel-good hormone that is advantageous for mental health. On the other hand, It’s good to avoid foods and drinks containing caffeine and gluten as they hold the record of causing anxiety.
- Heredity
Here let’s take an example of a mango plant. We know that mango plants always give mango as a fruit. In the same way, the children bear the properties of their parents. The DNA cells are transferred from parents to children exhibiting similar physical and psychological properties. But there’s always a chance of exception in human beings because each individual is different. Among the several mental diseases; bipolar disorder, one in ten children of the same parents can have it. In the patients having schizophrenia, there’s a 10% chance that one parent brother, or sister has the disease. The chance increases to 40% if both the parents have the disease and the chance goes up to 50% if the twin brother or sister has schizophrenia.
- Stress
Stress is one of the inevitable parts of human life. Like we cannot imagine a day without night, happiness always comes along with a bit of sadness and that’s the rule of the universe. Stress neither comes with an expiry date nor with any manufacturing date. When a sensitive mind cannot handle the pressure of distress, it leads to several different mental diseases. It also gives birth to several different physical diseases and worsens the illness if it already exists.
- Mental Injury
The deep injury in the head due to accidents can also lead to mental illness. There is a saying in our Nepalese society that we should never hit someone, especially a child in the head. It is said so because even minor brain injuries can lead to serious and unrecoverable mental illnesses for a lifetime. The head injury can lead to nerve damage that in turn causes mental trauma. That is why we can analyze that every head problem is more or less connected with the mental health and thoughts of the person (For instance migraine).
- Childhood
It is said that childhood is the foundation of life. Whatever shape one’s life takes depends on childhood. That is why we bear the major responsibility to provide the best suitable environment for our children to nurture and grow. It is said that we become what we are fed and hence a child should always be fed good culture and foods to make their health and future bright and beautiful. The famous saying from William Wordsworth ”A child is the father of a man”, also symbolizes the same thing in a deeper scenario.
- Certain life-changing events (sudden loss or gain)
When an unexpected event happens in life, we cannot control the flow of certain hormones in our brain and body. Either it overflows or underflows according to the situation and seriousness of the event. Sometimes we become completely shattered from within and it becomes impossible to console ourselves and recovery from that event is impossible. For example, unexpected death, unexpected lottery, sudden loss or gain of plenty of wealth, etc affects our mind in such a way that we fall into that deep pit of mental illness being helpless to retrieve ourselves from that.
- Inactivity
The movement of mind and body are inversely proportional to each other. When we are physically active, the circulation of blood in the brain is efficient. Due to this the movement and functioning of oxygen and other nutrients is high in the brain which keeps our nervous system healthy. Exercise promotes feeling good chemicals in the brain. It is also proved that crying increases awareness like yoga or martial arts. Crying also loses weight as stressful hormones pass through tears. However, crying every day and way too much is abnormal and causes harm. P. S. Too much of anything is not good.
- Lack of love
We know that the life of every creature on this planet starts with love. Those who believe in God also define God as the eternal foundation of love. Well, my personal belief is that being a creation of nature to unlove is to become unnatural. One’s life can never be filled with any luxury or fame when one lacks love in their life. Love can not only be received from our parents or partners but from our pets as well. When there is a scarcity of love in our lives hormones such as dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins are not produced in the required quantity and hence we become mentally sick and unstable. Life is incomplete without love and nothing else can fill the space of love in one’s life.
- Violence
The scenes beyond our usual habit such as violent and abnormal scenes that create disturbances in the mind can lead to mental illness. The decrease in serotonin over normal for a longer time is harmful to the brain. The unpleasant and undesirable circumstances hamper our nervous system. Violence does not necessarily have to be physical. Whether it was yesterday’s world war threat or it is yesterday’s coronavirus fear, both can be taken as mental outbreaks of violence to humankind which has been causing psychological disorders. There’s no doubt that violence leads to mental illness.
- The sixth sense
The unseen and unbelievable matter that our science has not yet succeeded in proving is the sixth sense. The person who has spiritual power also behaves differently than the normal human being. We might give it a name of coincidence and superstition but deep down we cannot deny that it is something beyond the so-called superstition and coincidence. Maybe this is the reason why hospitals also have prayer rooms. I don’t know if there’s God or a demon but I surely believe in the positive and negative energies that occupy our surroundings. Tantra and supernatural things are not everyone’s cup of tea and it requires lots of intellect to recognize these things.
Things always appear the way we behold them. So pandemics like coronavirus might also be a wise game of nature that has been giving us enough self-realization time and teaching us the importance of nature conservation. This might be the time to discover the unmanifested. After all mental illness is just a state of one’s mind being different from another’s definition of normal.
