Self-Advocacy For Mental Health Care

Tips on how to self advocate for your mental health in healthcare and more.

While ensuring our mental health care cannot be achieved alone, it holds a great impact with the inclusion of self-advocacy.

Advocating for yourself allows more than expressing your needs. When you are your own best defender, you are equipped regardless of who you may have at your side.

In many contexts, a learned skill can be considered a tool with which we construct, defend, or incrementally adjust our surroundings to meet our needs. As mental health is significant in anyone’s wellbeing, crafting the tools in keeping it safe is equally relevant.

Despite a fact that nobody should be placed in a position to require such a tool, it is also a truth that it is necessary. Relying solely on others can feel both supportive and discouraging. Despite how one may appreciate the assistance, independence is a rewarding relief. Here are some places that you may need to self-advocate.

At the doctor

Medical professionals are indispensable, valuable, and a key to progress, though, they may in some cases, impede your wellbeing. As a doctor is human, so are their tendencies to be potentially dismissive, or to categorize an issue too quickly.

What if you encounter an appointment, or a series of them, where your symptoms are disregarded as irrelevant, or the solution may not fit. Consider first that as to whether what is being said is potentially simply not a preferred diagnosis or treatment, while it may be in the best interest.

Make a mental checklist to ensure the difference between advocating for yourself, or when it may be ideal to ask further questions to verify what you are told. If the feeling is that your words were not properly heard, it’s valid to express as much. State your needs.

While the situation may evoke a strong reaction within you, your words can benefit from a calm and concise delivery. For example, if you feel a therapist will be of benefit, this professional is suited to refer you to one.

With a therapist

Just like a doctor, a therapist is meant to work for your best interest. It can take time to settle into a comfortable relationship where deeper progress can be established. Like any exchange, misunderstandings are possible.

It is relevant and valid to bring up these moments with a therapist and communicate a solution. It may be that they were not aware of any impact. It is part of therapeutic training to take feedback and work on an adaptive process with a client.

In an education setting

Depending on your location, there are different programs offered to assist you in your education. Those with known mental health issues will provide documentation of diagnosis and a prescription from your doctor that authorizes adaptive learning.

Your needs may be disregarded. This reaction can be taken as a roadblock, but in approaching a teacher on the matter, or in speaking up for your rights to those in a position to assist, it is possible to resolve the issue.

Self-advocating does not have to require forcefulness. The strongest argument is not won by overpowering in volume but through persuasive words and irrefutable points.

In the work environment

Accommodations in the workplace can be sourced from provisions by an employer, or they can be drawn from resources like apps. When beginning a new role, if accommodations are needed, making them known ensures an ability to have them put in place.

Stay tuned next week for more content on self -advocacy!