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Asked by anon-216410 to Robert, Olly, Nicola, Jasmin, Dennis, Caroline on 12 Jun 2019.
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Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 12 Jun 2019:
Depression. Because it’s invisible. Sometimes you think a person is doing well, but deep inside they are depressed. And the next thing you know they already died of suicide.
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Caroline Brett answered on 12 Jun 2019:
I would answer schizophrenia or similar conditions, which are perhaps best treated using medication rather than psychological methods – although for some people with this condition, cognitive behavioural therapy can be helpful
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Jasmin Moon answered on 12 Jun 2019:
Some mental health conditions are thought to be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, for example noradrenaline being too high or too low can contribute to bipolar disorder, in which case medication such as anti-depressants or lithium might be more effective than talking therapies. However it should be looked at case by case and both medication and psychological approaches can be helpful in all mental health conditions.
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Robert Dempsey answered on 12 Jun 2019:
I don’t think this is to do with a specific condition, it’s likely to do with the person themselves, what they are currently experiencing, how severe their symptoms are, and what they need at that time. There is some evidence that people who are experiencing very severe current symptoms find psychological therapies difficult to engage in – I think this is because these therapies often require the individual to really reflect on their experiences and consider what they have experienced, which may not be easy to do if someone is particularly unwell or distressed. Saying that, I do think it depends on the individual and I don’t think this is disorder-specific.
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Nicola Johnstone answered on 13 Jun 2019:
The tricky thing about mental health disorders is that they rarely occur one at a time. Often, people have more than one going on (we call that co-morbid) that can complicate things. So you can have different presentations of anxiety with depression, OCD with social anxiety, phobias, panic disorder, PTSD with depression and so on. These are called complex cases and different treatment approaches need to be tried out.
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Oliver Clabburn answered on 14 Jun 2019:
I think all mental illnesses can be difficult to treat. Like Rob has said, as we are all individuals, we all react differently to treatments. There’s no way of knowing that ‘treatment X’ which has worked for tens-of-thousands of people is definitely going to work on ‘patient Y’ who has just received a diagnosis for a mental health disorder. It’s also important to think about how MH is often invisible, so
there are no outward symptoms on display that someone is perhaps struggling. I think this can be challenging to treat someone as it may seem as though nothing is wrong, but it is a very different story under the surface.
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