Mental Health Helplines 

Eating Disorders 

are serious health conditions that affect both your physical and mental health. These conditions include problems in how you think about food, eating, weight and shape, and in your eating behaviors. These symptoms can affect your health, your emotions and your ability to function in important areas of life. 

Anorexia Nervosa: can be a life-threatening eating disorder. It includes an unhealthy low body weight, intense fear of gaining weight, and a view of weight and shape that is not realistic. Anorexia often involves using extreme efforts to control weight and shape, which often seriously interfere with health and daily life.

Anorexia may include severely limiting calories or cutting out certain kinds of foods or food groups. It may involve other methods to lose weight, such as exercising too much, using laxatives or diet aids, or vomiting after eating. Efforts to reduce weight can cause severe health problems, even for those who continue eating throughout the day or whose weight isn't extremely low.

Bulimia Nervosa: is a serious, sometimes life-threatening eating disorder. Bulimia includes episodes of bingeing, commonly followed by episodes of purging. Sometimes bulimia also includes severely limiting eating for periods of time. This often leads to stronger urges to binge eat and then purge.

Bingeing involves eating food — sometimes an extremely large amount — in a short period of time. During bingeing, people feel like they have no control over their eating and that they can't stop. After eating, due to guilt, shame or an intense fear of weight gain, purging is done to get rid of calories. Purging can include vomiting, exercising too much, not eating for a period of time, or using other methods, such as taking laxatives. Some people change medicine doses, such as changing insulin amounts, to try to lose weight.

Bulimia also involves being preoccupied with weight and body shape, with severe and harsh self-judgment of personal appearance.

Binge Eating Disorder: involves eating food in a short amount of time. When bingeing, it feels like there's no control over eating. But binge eating is not followed by purging. During a binge, people may eat food faster or eat more food than planned. Even when not hungry, eating may continue long past feeling uncomfortably full.

After a binge, people often feel a great deal of guilt, disgust or shame. They may fear gaining weight. They may try to severely limit eating for periods of time. This leads to increased urges to binge, setting up an unhealthy cycle. Embarrassment can lead to eating alone to hide bingeing. A new round of bingeing commonly occurs at least once a week.

Depression 

 is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes you may feel as if life isn't worth living.

More than just a bout of the blues, depression isn't a weakness and you can't simply "snap out" of it. Depression may require long-term treatment. But don't get discouraged. Most people with depression feel better with medication, psychotherapy or both.

Symptoms of Depression:

• Feelings of sadness, tearfulness, emptiness or hopelessness

• Angry outbursts, irritability or frustration, even over small matters

• Loss of interest or pleasure in most or all normal activities, such as sex, hobbies or sports

• Sleep disturbances, including insomnia or sleeping too much

• Tiredness and lack of energy, so even small tasks take extra effort

• Reduced appetite and weight loss or increased cravings for food and weight gain

• Anxiety, agitation or restlessness

• Slowed thinking, speaking or body movements

• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt, fixating on past failures or self-blame

• Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions and remembering things

• Frequent or recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts or suicide

• Unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches

Anxiety

It's normal to feel anxious from time to time, especially if your life is stressful. However, excessive, ongoing anxiety and worry that are difficult to control and interfere with day-to-day activities may be a sign of generalized anxiety disorder.

It's possible to develop generalized anxiety disorder as a child or an adult. Generalized anxiety disorder has symptoms that are similar to panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other types of anxiety, but they're all different conditions.

Living with generalized anxiety disorder can be a long-term challenge. In many cases, it occurs along with other anxiety or mood disorders. In most cases, generalized anxiety disorder improves with psychotherapy or medications. Making lifestyle changes, learning coping skills and using relaxation techniques also can help.

Symptoms of Anxiety:

• Persistent worrying or anxiety about a number of areas that are out of proportion to the impact of the events

• Overthinking plans and solutions to all possible worst-case outcomes

• Perceiving situations and events as threatening, even when they aren't

• Difficulty handling uncertainty

• Indecisiveness and fear of making the wrong decision

• Inability to set aside or let go of a worry

• Inability to relax, feeling restless, and feeling keyed up or on edge

• Difficulty concentrating, or the feeling that your mind "goes blank"

source of Information: The Mayo Clinic