Elizabeth Thottukandathil

Depression often causes people to feel sad, empty, or hopeless, and can cause a lack of interest in life. It can also affect a person's thinking patterns and physical health.

Anxiety can mean nervousness, worry, or self-doubt. Anxiety disorder is a mental health disorder that entails excessive, repeated bouts of worry, anxiety, and/or fear.

It's normal to experience anger at times, but for some, it becomes so frequent, intense, or difficult to control that it negatively affects their life. Anger management is a structured therapeutic approach toward reducing one’s anger to a point where more appropriate coping and/or conflict management skills are used. Beliefs and thoughts leading toward anger outbursts are explored while healthy coping and interpersonal skills are put into practice.

Distress stems from a subjective perception of something being unwanted, undesirable, or detrimental to your wellbeing. Excessive stress significantly impairs mental and physical health and is associated with many diseases and conditions.

Coping skills are tools and techniques one can learn, practice, and use to handle difficult emotions, decrease stress, and establish or maintain a sense of internal order.

Self-esteem is the degree to which a person feels confident, valuable, and worthy of respect. Feeling low self-esteem can influence overall well-being and be linked to anxiety and/or depression.

ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) causes a hard time focusing attention and controlling restless or impulsive behavior. People with ADHD might have emotional outbursts, be forgetful, and/or find it difficult to stay organized.

Positive and negative change can be difficult, including things like moving, breaking up, adjusting to parenthood, or changing careers. It’s normal to feel stressed, however, life transitions can inhibit people from living healthy lifestyles.

Mood disorder is a broad term used to include the different types of depressive and bipolar disorders, all of which affect mood. With a mood disorder, your moods may range from extremely low to extremely high or irritable.

Veterans’ issues involve any issues associated with veterans and/or their family members (military families). Veterans oftentimes present with issues that are unique to the human experience. PTSD, suicide, and substance use prevalence are high with this population as a result of immense stress and trauma. Other issues may include adjustment to civilian life, re-integrating with family, medical care, mental health treatment, employment, and finances.