While staying concerned with physical health, one must be careful about the mental illness flag before it strikes. Keep reading to analyze the minor changes in the behavior of your loved ones while detecting red flags of mental illness.
The mental illness flag depicts a symptom indicating your body and mind when something is wrong. Life is full of difficulties and chaos, which brings frustration and exhaustion, which can affect the mental health of someone.
The green color is for the mental illness flag, which depicts mental hedialth awareness. The design of the national mental illness flag reflects sunrise while shifting from dark to lighter colors in terms of brighter shades which represent the various states of emotional and psychological life.
Mental health is not simple; it comes with specific behavior, which comes with mental or emotional distress. One can even notice behavior changes by noticing their baseline as to how they usually behave.
Especially when someone is entering adolescence, they are undergoing some transition with abrupt changes in behavior. Sometimes, individuals may experience severe mental health challenges that require immediate attention.
Table of Contents
What are the red flags for mental illness?
It is common for individuals to distance themselves from their families, particularly among young adults and teens who experience emotional fluctuations and anxiety. Adolescence is not an easy time for parents, as it is the most sensitive time when individuals undergo physical, emotional, and hormonal changes to deal with sexual, social, and intellectual needs.
Almost every parent feels lacking well-equipped for such transitions, making it difficult to identify mental illness. It is essential to understand and determine the red flags of mental illness for the evaluation, and if needed, one can consult the relevant and competent person.
In the very first place, some common sense or intuitive feelings may help you to determine whether a person is behaving normally. First, you need to ask yourself whether the person is behaving differently, and then by following three categories, you can determine the red flag behaviors.
Physical functioning
One can notice red flags quickly by checking their sleep cycle and whether they have enough sleep. Seeing the eating and energy patterns as they properly eat or if they used to stay energetic, they remain fatigued.
Emotional functioning
One can act more irritating and get crossed over minor things. You can notice the increased level of frustration, along with sessions of crying.
Cognitive functioning
One can measure whether the individual interprets or internalizes events. Their behavior is sometimes illogical, or you can notice they are going through some excruciating phase.
What are the red flags for mental illness?
Emotional and mental struggles can manifest in various ways, from drastic to subtle, but can be observed through noticeable signs and behaviors. We will elaborate on some red flags to help you sense mental sickness before it strikes exceptionally.
Change in sleeping patterns
One can notice the change in their sleeping patterns, as they might sleep for extra hours and not want to leave their comfort zone. Currently, teenagers are managing many responsibilities, including family and academics.
Many individuals have work obligations and participate in extracurricular activities, which can lead to time constraints. The demands of daily routines and errands can exhaust them, emphasizing the importance of adequate sleep for overall well-being.
Individuals usually adopt standard sleep patterns according to their routine, so if they are going through some depression, the first thing that will disturb them is their sleep pattern. Excessive sleep will indicate depression, or it can be due to substance use.
At the same time, if someone finds it difficult to sleep on time or has insomnia, they are going through some physical or mental concerns. They might be unable to sleep for a long and long time, or disconnected sleep due to nightmares can lead to dire depression.
Fatigue
Fatigue is a fundamental indicator of poor mental health, as the blackness of sleep can cause excessive stress while shrinking the ability to think profoundly and self-care. When someone goes through sleeplessness, the affected must take time to relax and put themselves first, which is essential for their mental and physical health.
Loss of self-worth
While growing, teens struggle to build self-confidence and self-esteem, which will help distinguish one’s unique value. They go through many social challenges, overwhelming academic achievements, and accomplishments to excel in life.
A lot of stress and multitasking and stress to make things work out can result in a decrease in self-esteem. Although at a certain age, such pressure is normal to enhance individual abilities. Beware when your teen is no more vocal about their self-worth.
It is standard for teens not to express their emotions to their parents and undergo emotional stress. If you feel your child is not expressive towards their feelings, you need to arrange for someone outside the family to address their issues and make arrangements to counter them.
Social withdrawal
Social isolation can be a warning for a decrease in mental health as people adopt this behavior when uncomfortable with their surroundings.
Increased isolation
Check on your teen whether he needs some private space on any occasion; however, they are active on social media and with other friends. Previously they might have been enjoying different hobbies and activities. Now they are avoiding and feel shy to get into this kind of stuff anymore and gradually removing themselves from certain activities.
Lack of concentration
Teens are enthusiastic enough to concentrate while focusing very well. Lack of concentration suggests tiredness and lack of proper self-care. You can notice a loss of motivation and anxiety as some mental health conditions prevail. It could be the primary symptom of ADHD as it comes with a severe lack of concentration and focus.
The significant change in weight and appetite
Teens are much more conscious about body image as social media keeps them concerned about weight, size, appearance, and vision. They usually feel pressure to attain a specific size, to feel accepted.
If you observe a sudden and drastic change in eating habits and significant weight loss that is not typical, it could indicate the presence of eating disorders or other dangerous mental health conditions that warrant early intervention. In such cases, it is crucial to prioritize the ongoing health and safety of the teen.
Sudden decline in academic achievements
In this world of competition, academic challenges are fundamental for the hope of a promising future, and every teen is running after higher education pursuits. Everybody wants to attain future goals but can face devastating setbacks and slips that can stumble the overall plan.
If you notice some significant decline in their academic performance, then try to figure out the root cause for these changes. Your kid may be suffering from some underlying mental health situation.
Excitement mania
Mania is about a certain period of high energy and excitement; the affectees feel capable of doing something exceptional or supernatural. One may start to believe themselves extraordinary and undergo mood disorders, even bipolar disorders of personality.
Physical aches
Some traumas and stress will badly affect your body and mind. For instance, some of the depression symptoms will come with backache or other muscular pains thoroughly.
Psychosis
If the individual has started confusing some internal cognitive process for actual events and feels something as an illusion, we call it psychosis. If you notice the condition with increased psychosis, hallucination, or delusion, you must consult the professionals.
How can parents watch for red flags that their mental illness is severe?
In recent years, people have been way apart than ever together due to many more obligations nowadays. Different activities keep the family members moving in different directions, making it difficult for parents to understand the changes in their teens.
Open communication
Only some efforts can help you notice certain red flags; the most important is keeping the line of communication open. Your teens must be aware that they can speak openly in front of you without being afraid of any judgmental manner.
Learn more about symptoms
It is important to recognize that health conditions can be treated. Seek proper guidance for treatment, including discussions with primary care providers to understand the symptoms your teen may be experiencing.
Be observant
Finally, being parents, one must notice the significant changes in their teens by learning about their problematic experiences and situations. They must enhance their strength and emotions to deal with life’s challenges.
Remember that severe or sudden behavior changes could be a solid red flag, and your teen may require medical treatment, as mental health conditions need proper treatment.
National mental illness flag
The nation’s mental illness flag supports all the efforts in mental health. Professionals collaborated with different foundations and mental health organizations and created a flag in 2020 to identify mental health awareness efforts.
Is there a color for mental illness?
The green color is the base of the national mental illness flag as it is an established color for mental health awareness. The flag’s design depicts sunrise with the shift of shades from dark to light through brighter shades of color.
All of the shades on the flag represent the different states of someone’s emotional and psychological life. A simple design will make it more replicable, relatable, and transcultural as it delineates that we can bring mental health out of darkness into the light.
Mental health is prevalent now, and the world badly needs a particular symbol to represent mental health awareness. The flag became popular among all fifty states of America and other countries worldwide, and one can track it by using the world map.
May is a mental health month during the national mental illness flag flown over the State Capital in Frankfort, Kentucky. The Pete Foundation proceeds with flag sales to support mental health efforts and organizations.
Categories of national mental illness flags
We can split flags into two categories:
- Clinical flags
- Psychosocial flags
Clinical flags
Clinical flags are common while encompassing various areas of health, such as red flags for musculoskeletal disorders, which indicates any possible severe pathology, including inflammatory and neurological conditions.
In addition to structural musculoskeletal disorder, suspected infections, circulatory problems, tumors, or systemic disease need urgent investigation and, in certain conditions, some surgical referral.
Few symptoms come in the patient’s history, showing something is seriously wrong with them. We need highly trained physiotherapists to identify the red flags to deal with musculoskeletal disorders. The patient needs urgent medical attention after figuring out the suspect red flags. They sometimes need to send the patient to A&R (Artist & Repertoire) instead of risking any life-changing pathology.
We can also add orange flags to the spectrum, representing the same mental health issues and psychological problems. Such orange flags can also alert about severe psychiatric matters requiring referral to some special treatment instead of any regular health treatment.
Moreover, orange flags may include excessive high levels of distress, significant personality disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, drug addiction, or some clinical depression.
Psychosocial flags
Such flags help identify someone’s personality traits, social context problems, and some affecting factors for the recovery and return to work. The concept of psychosocial flags came to light by Kendall et al. in 1997, which helped to look into the factors which can develop chronic disability with significantly less expected chances of recovery.
Psychosocial flags make the concerned people work on a biopsychosocial model while providing a framework for assessment and planning. Such flags are indications that the patient may not recover in a particular expected time and needs additional support to return to work.
Psychosocial flags could be an obstacle in the path of recovery. Various factors will determine outcomes, including activity levels, participation, and work but are less relevant to reporting the symptoms.
Over the years, experts have subdivided psychosocial flags into yellow, blue, and black, reflecting different interactions that can affect recovery. Yellow flags deal with the person’s features which can affect a person to manage the situation according to their feelings., thoughts, and behaviors.
Blue flags concern the workplace and the employee’s benefits regarding health and work. Black flags describe the contextual and environmental factors within a specific setting, including people, systems, and policies. Furthermore, these flags can impede healthcare providers’ activities and workplace support.
Types of flags
We will guide you about some essential flags anyone can go through when suffering from mental illness.
- Red flags
- Orange flags
- Yellow flags
- Blue flags
- Black flags
Red flags
Red flags are signs of severe pathology, which may cause fracture, tumor, or unremitting night pain. Such red flags as your mental illness is heading for a breakdown may be sudden weight loss and bladder and bowel inconsistency.
Orange flags
Orange flags are psychiatric; one can screen them by asking questions about clinical depression and other personality disorders. Usually, they do screening with the help of Patient Health Questionnaire-2, which can diagnose depression’s first-step approach.
Patient Health Questionnaire-2 will determine if someone lacks interest in doing things or feels down, depressed, or helpless. If the screening test result is 3, the individual will continue with the PHQ-9 for further assessment of depression.
Yellow flags
These flags are due to disturbances like beliefs, judgments, appraisals, emotional responses, and pain behavior strategies. Numerous obstacles include the aspects of thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, which may consist of the following examples:
- Thinking the worst or catastrophizing.
- Going through unbearable painful experiences and reporting extreme pain disproportionate to the condition.
- Unhelpful beliefs about pain and work.
- Over-anxious, preoccupied with health, distressed, and low in mood.
- Fear of re-injury and movement.
- Uncertainty about the future.
- Recurring behaviors.
- Expect other people to deal with the problems.
- Visiting various practitioners for help but resulting in no improvement.
Blue flags
Blue flags are about perceptions about the relationship between work and health, mainly about employees and the workplace. The employee can undergo fears and misconceptions about work and health, affecting their previous experiences in their company. Blue flags may include the following things:
- Low job satisfaction.
- Concerns about the ability to meet the demand of the job.
- Typically poor support at work.
- Feeling that their job is very stressful.
- The accommodating approach provides altered duties and modified work options to facilitate them at work.
- Poor communication between employer and employee.
Black flags
Black flags are about system or contextual obstacles, which are outside the immediate control of employees, and they are trying to return to work. Black flags may include:
- Involved misunderstandings.
- Financial issues and claims procedures.
- Sensational media reports.
- Social isolation to disconnect from the workplace.
- Family and friends with some strong unhelpful beliefs can influence the employee.
It usually occurs due to poor or unhelpful company policies. Company policies can take two forms: no or inadequate policy, which surrounds sickness absence management and returns to work.
There could be rigid absence management within a disciplinary policy system that can not allow sufficient flexibility to deal with genuine rehabilitation needs.
How can one make a flag assessment?
While assessing psychological flags, one must need early intervention and a proper approach to everyday health problems. The psychological factors become increasingly crucial at the start of two to six weeks after a problem arises, and this is the critical time for investment.
One can opt for a stepped approach by using an assessment tool to fulfill the employee’s needs by starting some key questions and undertaking a screening questionnaire. For further in-depth assessment, several valuable methods exist, such as:
- Observation.
- Key questions.
- Screening questionnaires.
- Paying a visit to the workplace.
- Taking action to get help.
Observation
The way an employee behaves and interacts with others while talking about the condition they are going through and work.
Key questions
Key questions will give you an idea about the present flags, which may include:
- How are you coping with things?
- Is it getting you down?
- What do you expect is going to happen?
- What do you think has caused the problem?
- What can be done at work to help?
- When will you get back to work?
Screening questionnaires
Several screening questionnaires are there that help to identify flags in detail. The questionnaire is part of the overall assessment process, and one can use it with various methods.
For instance, if there is some screening questionnaire for acute low back pain, it may include different sections on pain management, anxiety levels, along with work and activity levels. Some other measurements include fear avoidance, fear of movement, and self-efficacy, which could be a helpful addition.
Structured interview
After confirming the presence of the flags, the next step is a structured interview to get more information about the particular flags and issues, which will help to know the areas one must focus on.
Attitudes
It is all about knowing a patient’s attitudes and beliefs about their problem, whether they have a positive or negative attitude toward the pain and the potential treatment.
Behavior
One must assess how a patient has changed his attitude toward the pain and changed the routine to compensate for specific movements. What could be the early signs of fear avoidance and catastrophizing?
Compensation
Notice things, whether awaiting a claim due to some potential accident, and it is putting some unnecessary stress on their life.
Diagnosis
The screening questionnaire may have particular language that can affect patients’ thoughts. Another critical question is about previous treatment regarding the pain and some conflict in diagnosis. All these questions may make the patients over-think the issues, leading to fear avoidance.
Emotions
Through some screening tests, one may realize whether a patient has some underlying emotional issues, which may lead to an increased potential for chronic pain. It will also help to collect some background on their psychological history.
Family
To collect data about the patient’s family related to the patient’s injury. The family could be under or over-supportive, affecting the patient’s pain.
Work
Check their work situation, whether they are working now or not, which may raise potential financial issues. It will also help to pertain to the patient’s thoughts about their working environment.
Researchers have worked thoroughly on such flags and suggested key workplace factors which may include in screening:
- Heavy physical demands may delay the return to work.
- Inability to modify work that won’t make you return to work sooner.
- Stressful work demands might be a hurdle to return to work.
- Lack of social support at the workplace.
- Job dissatisfaction could greatly hinder getting settled at the workplace happily.
- Some have poor recovery expectations and return to work under certain circumstances.
- A person may be afraid of undergoing a repeated episode of getting injured.
Paying a visit to the workplace
An excellent additional method to know what red flags for mental illness could be related to workplace visits. An informal or more structured visit for ergonomic assessment will help gather the familiar flag system.
Taking action to get help
Thorough research worldwide will show that early intervention can minimize or delay illness symptoms, prevent hospitalization, and improve recovery. If the person is not clearly showing signs of a diagnosable mental illness, we can figure out some warning symptoms.
Similar to other medical conditions, some early interventions can make a crucial difference in preventing any severe disease. Early intervention can be beneficial in various ways, especially for early recovery; therefore, one must encourage a person to
- Go for an evaluation by mental health or other healthcare professionals.
- Learn extensively about all the signs and symptoms of mental illness.
- Educate oneself with the help of some supportive counseling about daily life strategies and stress management.
- Closely follow the required conditions for intensive care.
We need a careful assessment of each individual to follow a particular treatment. Such comprehensive treatment may prevent early symptoms, which may lead to some severe illnesses.
One can get help from individual or family counseling, vocational or educational support, being part of some multi-family problem-solving group, or some appropriate medication.
Family members have always valued partners; one must involve them in possible treatment. Learning about mental illness will help individuals and families understand the significant symptoms and their solutions.
Mental illness pride flags
Here we will elaborate on color and diversity to fly the LGBT flag at some next pride while making a statement with the mental illness pride flag. The flag is printed on quality polyester and finished with brass grommets, making it perfect for indoor and casual outdoor use.
The measurement of the flag could be 90 to 150 cm, and perfect for everyday use, even hanging on the wall or wearing a cap. There are all kinds of gay, bisexual, pansexual, and some LGBT flags with a colorful diversity of flags.
The LGBTQ community needs safe, supported, affirmed, joyful, and mentally healthy lives. There are various hate-based crimes, anti-trans legislation, and discrimination that one should not ignore.
People struggling with their identity or living in some unsupportive environment should find helpful resources to live a valuable and resilient life, and the pride flag is one of them.
Conclusion
The mental illness flag represents the challenges individuals face with mental health, highlighting the need for understanding and support. Red flags mean your mental illness is worse, and there is something potentially severe but treatment.
Living with mentally ill people, red flags may include excessive worry, fear, anxiety, sadness, with confused thinking. It comes with extreme mood changes and difficulty understanding and perceiving ability. One can determine it with excessive use of recreational drugs, which comes with an inability to carry out daily activities.
The national mental illness flag will help you develop a routine that values self-care and mental wellness, and things change drastically with little effort. Each color of the flag represents a form of mental illness,
Red flags your mental illness is heading for a breakdown, which means you should be concerned about the teen’s mental health while providing excellent support. Any triggering event can cause safety concerns; hence the proper medical treatment will help to attain mental health goals.
