New Year, New You: 4 Ways to Prioritize Your Mental Health

If you haven’t already noticed on your own, rates of common mental health issues, namely depression and anxiety, are on the rise. For example, about 29% of adults in the United States have been diagnosed with depression at some point, which is 10 points higher than just 10 years ago in 2015. 

And the numbers surrounding anxiety disorders, which include issues like generalized anxiety,  post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, aren't any better. A 2024 study by the American Psychiatric Association reports that 43% of American adults feel more anxious than the year before.

Wherever you fall on this mental health spectrum, if you want to take steps to promote better wellness in this arena, Dr. Diana Ghelber and the team at Institute for Advanced Psychiatry can help. 

Here, we look at four great strategies for promoting better mental health in the new year and beyond.

1. Know when to get help

Mental health issues can be tricky because many people try to stuff them down and ignore them — to their detriment. Unresolved mental health issues don’t go away if you ignore them and, more often, become worse.

The reality is that the first great step toward better mental health is acknowledging that there’s an issue. So, if you’re feeling overwhelming worry or sadness and it’s permeating other aspects of your life, such as work and relationships, we urge you not to continue like this.

After all, there is help! We offer a great many tools at our practice, from psychotherapy and medications to innovative treatments like transcranial magnetic stimulation and ketamine infusion therapy. Our goal is to help people navigate their mental health and break free from conditions that keep them trapped in vicious circles of worry or sadness.

So, please don’t try to go this alone — we have some great techniques for helping you to find peace and happiness again.

2. Stay in the moment

While we can do our part to improve your mental health, there are many things you can do on your own. The first is practicing more conscious mindfulness and staying in the moment. 

A lot of our collective anxiety comes from worrying about the future or staying stuck in the past. When you do this, you create harmful habit loops in your brain that aren’t based in reality. 

This is why practicing strategies to keep you in the present moment, which is the only reality you should be dealing with, is the better way.  

Techniques like meditation, body scans, and deep breathing are all great practices for keeping your mind in the present moment. In fact, one study on meditation found that, “Conscious attention led to reduced amygdala activity; decreased anxiety, depression symptoms, and self-esteem; and decreased negative symptoms.”

3. Prioritize sleep

Did you know that people with insomnia are 10 times more likely to have depression and 17 times more likely to have anxiety than the general population?

Enough can’t be said about the importance of 7-9 hours of restorative sleep each night for improving your mental health. Your brain and body use this time for reset and rest, which are critical for daily function. So, please prioritize sleep in the new year.

4. Take timeouts from the modern world

A lot of the increase in anxiety and depression comes from living in a modern world that isn’t doing our mental health any favors. For example, bad news that promotes fear sells, so that’s what we’re mostly exposed to. And social media isn’t helping as we create fictional worlds that we should aspire to, but never achieve.

So, we often tell clients to go easy on the news, social media, and politics for the sake of their mental health. Simply unplugging a few times a week for a nice walk can really do your brain some good.

If you’d like more help navigating your mental health in the new year, we’re just a phone call or click away. To sit down with one of our specialists, please contact our office in Fort Worth, Texas, today to schedule a consultation.