How come I had different symptoms earlier and now my symptoms have changed?
Yes, it’s important to remember that a person’s mental health or psychiatric illness can change over time, depending on many factors. When the demands placed on a person exceed their resources and coping abilities, their mental health could be impacted.
Psychiatric illnesses are complex and often change with time
It’s possible that a patient might have one set of symptoms at one point and over a period of time these symptoms might not be present. This causes confusion in the minds of the relatives and they often think that the patient is pretending or making excuses to get out of a responsibility role.
Let’s understand this with an example.
Let’s take depression for example. When a patient develops depression, it happens gradually over time. The illness goes from some symptoms to a lot of symptoms.
In the initial phases of the illness, the patient can and does have good days. These are days when the symptoms have minimum effect on the patient’s ability to function (talk, interact, work etc.). This creates a false idea in the minds of the relatives that the patient is fine, and that this depression is just a mindset.
Relatives often advice listening to positive/motivational videos, going out for a change, taking a break etc. among other things to make a person feel better. All these activities cause a transient improvement in symptoms, which reinforces the concept in the relatives that it’s all in the mind. The more number of good days, the less convinced the caregivers are about the presence of an illness.
SEE ALSO: Clinical Depression or Major Depressive Disorder – What Does That Mean?
With losing time, patient become more ill
With time, in most cases the number of these good days reduces and the symptoms begin to show. This causes significant distress and affects the person’s ability to function normally. But at the same time, the relatives are less likely to believe the patient and are more prone to wait for a natural recovery. In this process, time is lost and the patient becomes more ill.
Sometimes, patients can spontaneously become better and be illness free. This happens because of a lot of reasons, but it re-enforces the fact that the illness was all in progression of illness over time. How come I had different symptoms earlier and now my symptoms have changed to the mind and there was no need for medicines. Please note that these cases are far and few and natural recovery is an exception rather than a rule.
Depression is just one of the examples. Similarly in other psychiatric illnesses also, symptoms can change over time leading to a lot of confusion in the minds of the patient and the caregivers.
Take home points
- Symptoms of psychiatric illnesses are not stable and constant over time
- Patients might experience good days, but that’s not a sign of symptom resolution
- Caregivers have to consider the overall picture with focus on the ability of the patient to function and the severity of symptoms
- Some patients can become naturally illness free, but that is an exception and not the rule.
