What are the symptoms of mental health problems?

There is no standardized performance template for mental health problems. The core feature is that an individual's emotional, cognitive, and behavioral states have sustained abnormal deviations compared with their usual self, and have affected normal work, study, or social interaction. Occasional depression and irritability are not considered psychological problems.

A while ago, I interviewed a girl from an Internet operations position. She used to be a well-known "living treasure" in the department. She was always the first to speak in team building and creative meetings. As a result, after Q4 last year for more than a month, she was paralyzed every day when she arrived at her work station. She couldn't even get interested in her favorite taro paste pop pop, and she couldn't even hold meetings. She was always stuck in the last row. She couldn't put pen to paper for two weeks on a project that could be completed in three days before. She always said, "I can't do anything well." She often kept her eyes open until three or four o'clock at night and couldn't fall asleep. She thought she was just "tired." It wasn't until her roommate reminded her, "You seem to be a different person recently" that she thought of coming for consultation.

Many people's understanding of psychological problems is still limited to "being depressed, prone to crying, and having trouble thinking about things", but in fact there are many manifestations that are particularly confusing, and even the patients themselves feel that they are "in a good state". For example, a boy who had just entered college as a sophomore was accompanied by his parents. They said that he had only slept 2 hours a day for the past half month and was not tired at all during the day. As soon as he opened his eyes, he borrowed money from classmates to start a business without even attending classes.

There are now different opinions in the industry on whether mild emotional abnormalities should be classified as psychological problems. Some clinicians feel that as long as the symptoms last for more than two weeks and have caused a clear sense of pain, even if they can still go to school and go to work normally, timely intervention is needed.； Some scholars also believe that there is no need to be overly sensitive. Occasional mood swings are normal for ordinary people, and casually labeling people with "psychological problems" will bring additional psychological burden.

When I do public welfare science popularization in the community, I often encounter parents who ask me: Their children always complain of headaches and stomachaches, but if they go to the hospital to find out everything is normal, are they deliberately pretending to be sick and skipping school? In fact, this is a very common physical manifestation of psychological problems among teenagers. Just like if there is a bug in your mobile phone system, a "system error" prompt may not pop up directly. It may first appear as an app crash or typing lag. The body is just sending signals to children who cannot express emotions.

In fact, you don’t always need to check the scale according to the online scale. Whether you feel comfortable or not and whether people who know you well feel that you have “changed” are the most intuitive judgment criteria. If you really feel something is wrong, it is better to talk to a professional than to hold it in yourself.