Mental Illness and Physical Comorbidities

Authors: Dr. Lilly Partha & Dr. Rishi Partha

All too often, the strong correlation between mental health illness and acute and chronic physical ailments is overlooked. Common physical symptoms including fatigue, insomnia, headaches, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, joint pains, amenorrhea, shortness of breath, and palpitations are treated as isolated symptoms and are thus treated accordingly, rather than as frequently interconnected manifestations of an underlying mental health diagnosis. Failure to understand this critical fact leads to superfluous prolonging of an individual’s mental and emotional despair by insufficiently treating the root of his/her suffering.

To provide additional proof of the strong connection between mental and physical health, one need only look at the diagnostic criteria of major psychiatric diagnoses. Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders, and a hallmark symptom of Generalized Anxiety Disorder is recurrent headaches and muscle aches that cause clinically significant distress. Panic disorder is diagnosed via intense anxiety spikes with concurrent chest tightness, faintness, palpitations, shortness of breath, and/or profuse sweating. An established diagnostic criterion of Major Depressive Disorder is impaired sleep quality which contributes to depression and excessive daytime fatigue and loss of energy. Posttraumatic stress disorder is epitomized by intrusive, recurrent thoughts that can lead to headaches, myalgias, and exhaustion from reliving a traumatic experience.

The Significance of Holistic Treatment

Psychiatrists, compared to psychologists, are distinguished not only by their ability to prescribe psychotropic medications but also by their capacity to first rule out medical etiologies prior to establishing a psychiatric diagnosis, as well as the knowledge to connect physical ailments to mental etiologies and treat accordingly. Such practices are standardized via ordering basic labs such as a CBC, CMP, and TSH to rule out common physiologic mimickers of psychiatric ailments, examples including anemia, hyponatremia, and hypothyroidism.

Yet too often, mental health is often portrayed as distinct from physical health to the detriment of countless long-suffering patients. A holistic approach stresses the connection between mind, body, and spirit, and treating one of these facets is treating all of them. Despite the division of medicinal roles into various specialties, the foremost fact to remember for all physicians is the essentialness of treating the person as a whole, namely a collection of physical, mental, and spiritual experiences, to ultimately improve the quantity and especially the quality of a person’s life.

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