Got a question related to mental health? ASK DR KIM

[Chris_B]

Hi everyone,

This is a thread for asking questions of our resident GP and counsellor, Dr Kim, who pops into the forums regularly.

PLEASE NOTE as per our community rules, Dr Kim won't be able to answer questions about medications, these are best discussed offline directly with your mental health professional.

UPDATE - 01/03/2018
BEFORE YOU ASK DR.KIM PLEASE CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING POINTS:

• Dr Kim's time is limited! We cannot provide an ongoing dialogue with Dr Kim in this thread - one post/question per person please
•  We'd recommend you have a look through the forums before posting here to see if your question has already been answered by Dr Kim, our other members, or if there's information about it already on the beyondblue website. If a question pops up that has already been answered previously, or if alternate resources are available, one of our moderators will reply and direct you to the link.
• When writing your question, imagine you are speaking to someone in person i.e. provide a clear and detailed post with enough information that outlines how Dr.Kim can help you.

Background

After 20 years of experience working as a GP, Dr Kim realised in 2003 the aspect of her work she enjoyed most was talking to people and understanding the way they think and behave – and so she underwent training in counselling and therapy, where she now solely works.

Her experience includes working with a wide range of mental health issues including anxiety, depression and adolescent mental health.

“Given my training I also see couples, siblings, parents with their children and entire family groups,” she says. “In this work I hope to give families the skills to understand one another and have the strategies to communicate and manage relationships that are distressing them. I believe strongly that best therapy is achieved when there is trust in the therapist's ability but also their genuine desire to understand and help.”

[Dr_Kim]

yeboiiiiii said:Do i have an actual mental health disorder? I tend to have these thoughts that i overthink from like days to months and when i think about these things i literally cannot concentrate on anything else but that issue and basically my whole life stops for it.  

This might sound a bit strange to you but I think you might have a type of OCD ( Obsessional Compulsive Disorder). People often think that OCD is simply the type of illness where one becomes anxious or feels something terrible will happen unless  things are in a certain order or done a certain number of times etc. 

However, there is a whole darker side to OCD, which is much more about the obsessions (the thoughts in the head) than the compulsions ( what one actually does).  Like with other OCD disorders, there is a part of ones brain that knows the thoughts are “silly” or not based in reality… but that doesn’t make it easy to just shut them off or ignore them. You mention that you”know they are ridiculous" but they just keep “popping up" .. and that makes me think that you are stuck in a obsessive thinking pattern. Most people with this Obsessional thinking disorder desperately want the thoughts to stop .

The fact that you have a history of these episodes makes me a bit more suspicious that this is OCD . I wonder if you have had this type of thinking for a long time or if it is new? I also wonder if you have had other types of anxious thinking as well?

The good news is that it is treatable ! It isn’t easy to treat  (as in it won’t be over with by next week!) but with good medical support , I think you can learn to manage these thoughts. Many people do end up on medication for this condition as it can be stubborn , but the first step is your GP.

Print this response out if you like and take it with you.
PS - I suggest you do some reading about it too…Have a look at this article for example.

https://www.sane.org/media-centre/the-sane-blog/1811-busting-the-myths-about-ocd
 

[Guest_128]

Hello,

I would like to know the facts on what psychologists are able to discuss with parents.

Our baby who is 16 has for the last 4yrs seen a private psychologist as a safety net due to my mental health issues and her 19yr sister. She and we have a very good professional relationship with him.

Last week I sent a letter to school(private small school) not that matters, I was asking the head of senior school for someone to have a chat cause her school life was starting to suffer and she is an a grade student. I was told that 1of her close teachers or the school psychologist would talk to her.

3 day went by and I had no reply to if everything was ok, I messaged for someone to contact me.

I got a ph call from the school psychologist and she wanted to know what I wanted. I asked is everything ok???der

Im sorry I can't discuss anything with. Short and of story, told her she has no swear idea!!!!!!

any thoughts

Later

[Dr_Kim]

9 names later said:

Hello,

I would like to know the facts on what psychologists are able to discuss with parents.

Hi there,

This is such a difficult area for parents and health professionals alike. My sense is that everyone is really trying to do the right thing by the young person and has their best interest at heart and so I usually start from that place. 

You have your child's best interest at heart. The school psychologist has the child's best interest at heart.

Now that seems a reasonably easy thing to understand . The problem comes when there are different views about how the best interest of the child / young person is served. Some parents feel that it is in the child's best interest for them to kept abreast of whats happening for them to be told whats going on in therapy sessions. They feel that with that info, they can then aid their child in getting better.

However, many adolescent therapists will only tell parents what is said in sessions (without explicit permission of the client) if there is the possibility that the child is at risk of harming themselves or others.

Why? This code of conduct was developed so that young people could feel safe to say whatever they pleased in a session to their therapist without the fear that it was going to be reported back to their parents. The therapist can often be a good neutral ear.

Rest assured though that it is also a therapist duty of care to report to a child's parents if they believe there is anything going on that is harming your child, so you will not be kept in the dark about that.

It seems like your daughter’s school is trying really hard to foster your daughters sense of self reliance and I note that when you flagged to the school that there were issues at home, they took it up with her, not with you. This separation from your baby, your loved child, can seem a bit harsh but maybe is also allowing your daughter to learn great life skills in how to attend to her own emotional and mental health needs.

I hope that this helps to clarify and to allow you to see that the reaction you got was not personal but standard practise for a therapist who is applying a code of conduct from her professional association. I think it is hard for you but probably ultimately may be ok for your daughter so I hope that is reassuring .
 

[Sophie_M]

Hi everyone, thanks for all your questions.

Dr Kim is going to be away for a few weeks, so we're closing this thread for the time being. She will be back with us on June 19. 

[Sophie_M]

Hi everyone, this thread is now open again for questions. Please refer to the original post for guidelines.

[bluewater]

Hi Dr Kim

I've been diagnosed with GAD and are working through worry modules with my psychologist. My psychologist says I've always had this but its become more prominent since two devastating incidents involving grief.

I feel it's conplicated grief i dont see I'll ever get past it just by learning not to worry especially since its been 3 years and I feel I've developed more symptoms. I feel like I should just give up and realise that this is just me from now on, in saying that i have ongoing challengers which should hopefully be over in 12 or so months.

[Makka79]

Hi I would like to chat online now with someone to help me overcome a panic attack

[Dr_Kim]

bluewater said:

Hi Dr Kim

I've been diagnosed with GAD and are working through worry modules with my psychologist. My psychologist says I've always had this but its become more prominent since two devastating incidents involving grief.

I feel it's conplicated grief i dont see I'll ever get past it just by learning not to worry especially since its been 3 years and I feel I've developed more symptoms. I feel like I should just give up and realise that this is just me from now on, in saying that i have ongoing challengers which should hopefully be over in 12 or so months.

I wonder if some of your frustration comes from your trying to define what is happening to you. You have called it GAD, complicated grief , “just you” or maybe reactive processes due to ongoing challenges.

Sometimes it is easier to concentrate on the symptoms and really try to tackle those. For example, if you have difficulty in decision making this could come from all sorts of reasons ( e.g. anxiety , depression , personality style…) .

Sometimes it is just easier to concentrate on how to manage the symptom. So work with your psychologist on your top 3 difficult symptoms and see if you can develop strategies to help to manage them in the short term.

So for decision making , it might be something like - making a list of pros and cons or putting a time limit on it or marking possible outcomes out of 10 or whatever helps you move forward…. But not worrying too much about whether the poor decision making is due to GAD, grief or whatever.

Just put one foot in front of another day by day and my hope is that eventually it will seem easier. Don’t look too far into the future . Just take it day by day.

[Sophie_M]

Hi Makka79, this is not a live chat thread.  You can speak live on webchat with one of our professional counsellors between 3pm and midnight AEST via the following link:

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/get-immediate-support

[Chopper86]

Hi there,

I feel I am a generally happy go-lucky kind of guy, however, over the last 12 months I have had multiple 'episodes', the first treated as a dissociative break, the second non-treated, third treated as epilespsy (with no medically obvious and/or detecatable signs), and the latest (and, somewhat different as I was twitching and passsing out momentarily with no apparent discomfort). Don't feel I'm under any more stress then the average Joe.

Any potentially underlying psychological explanations for this or should I seek a neurogolist?