How Grief Affects Mental Health: Understanding the Long-Term Impact

Everyone suffers from feelings of grief at some point in their lives. Death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a pet, or loss of a friendship can all contribute to mental health difficulties. Grief counseling from your mental health specialist can help. Janine Watters at Mindful Beginnings Center of Healing is a board-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner with extensive experience in the psychiatric field. She provides a wide range of mental health support services, including grief counseling.

What You Need To Know About Grief 

Grief is a process, and people experience grief in different ways. Grief can cause intense feelings of sadness, shock, and isolation. It’s also common to experience anger at the loss of someone.

Feelings of grief typically diminish over time, but sometimes, feelings continue. They can become overwhelming and take over your life. They can lead to chronic depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.

There are some steps you can take to help manage grief. It’s important to remember to:

• Take time to cry and grieve
• Listen to music
• Write about your emotions
• Have a regular routine each day
• Live one day at a time
• Don’t make any major decisions for awhile

You should seek help from a mental health professional if you are experiencing:

• Grief which makes it very difficult to get through the day
• Problems with socializing
• Difficulty sleeping
• Trouble concentrating
• Vivid dreams or nightmares
• Changes in the way you eat, either eating too much or too little
• Intense and ongoing emotions including sadness, anger numbness, depression, anxiety, despair, emptiness, or guilt

Grief counseling with your mental health professional can help you manage feelings of grief and overcome them, so you can be happy again.

Want To Know More About Grief Counseling?

To discover more about the benefits of grief counseling and how it can help you, call Janine Watters at Mindful Beginnings Center of Healing at (708) 696-1088. Call today.