Caroline Cavanagh argues mental illness deserves the same treatment as physical injury. A panic attack or trauma should prompt professional help as quickly as a broken bone would. Untreated mental health problems accumulate like untreated physical ones.
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In some situations, it's okay to get professional help, whether that's through your GP or whether you go to a therapist. The stigma of going into therapy is reducing, still got a way to go in my opinion, but if any one of us had, I don't know, a headache, you can self-medicate, you can take a paracetamol, or you can acknowledge I've got a headache because I haven't drunk enough water today, and glug back a litre of water, you will feel better. No issue in that, no qualms. If you break your leg, there's no qualms in then going to an orthopaedic surgeon and getting your leg pinned. No one thinks twice about it. Trauma is a mental injury. It's okay to go to a specialist to get help for that mental injury. Because just like if you had a broken leg and you carried on walking on it, it ain't going to heal. So if you have got something that is quite acute, and that can be a whole range of things, acute can be something very specific like a trauma. Someone was speaking earlier about a very scary panic attack. That's a specific acute situation. It is easier to get help from a specialist to reduce that. Similarly, things can become very significant when they just compile. Little steps taken often takes you a long way from where you are. And so it is okay to seek professional help to get you back to a place where you feel in control.
