What is mental health disruption?
Mental health disruption is what happens when the ordinary ways we cope stop working. After a loss, a trauma, a long period of strain or a major life change, many people experience anxiety, low mood, exhaustion, poor sleep, irritability or numbness, and a feeling of having lost themselves. It is a human response to what life has asked of you, not a personal failing.
Signs you may be depleted
- You are functioning, but you no longer feel like yourself
- A tiredness that rest doesn’t fix
- Anxiety or dread without a clear cause
- Low mood, tearfulness, or feeling nothing at all
- Withdrawing from the people you love
- Holding everything together for everyone, except yourself
- Losing your sense of meaning or direction
What can bring it on
Bereavement. Trauma. Divorce or the end of a relationship. Illness, or caring for someone who is ill. Redundancy, career loss or burnout. Moving countries, estrangement, or the loss of an identity you built your life around. Often it is several losses close together, some of them invisible, that finally become too much to carry.
When life wounds or depletes us, we don’t only grieve what happened. We can lose our footing, our sense of self, and sometimes our mental health.
How we can help
At The Grief Clinic, we don’t approach distress as something faulty to be fixed. We look at the whole person: what has happened, what you have been carrying, and what you need now, physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.
Therapy helps you slow down, make sense of what has broken, and call yourself into presence, so that you can recover, heal and return to yourself, authentically, and anchored in meaning, purpose and connection.
We offer individual therapy and mental health assessments, and can work alongside your GP or psychiatrist. We do not oppose diagnosis or medication; we make sure you are seen as a whole person first.
Getting help now
The Grief Clinic is not an emergency service. If you are in immediate danger or thinking about ending your life, call 999, go to A&E, or contact Samaritans free on 116 123, any time of day or night.
By Dr Chloe Paidoussis-Mitchell, Chartered Counselling Psychologist (DCPsych, CPsychol, AFBPsS), founder of The Grief Clinic London and author of The Loss Prescription (HarperCollins).