What Can I Do?
The most important thing you can do is to begin the process of finding help. Here are some steps that you can take today and some resources for you to explore in the days and weeks to come.
Self-Care
Self-care can help you manage your stress, anxiety, or depression. Self-care looks different for everyone. What is important is that you do things that you enjoy and to make the time to do the things that can improve your physical health and your mental health. Check out our Health Tips page for ideas and resources on exercise, meditation, nutrition, and coping strategies.
Treatment
The treatment will vary based upon the problem. Treatment for mental illness can include talk therapy, medication, and other types of therapy for specific diagnoses. If you need support for your mental health, you can always access professional support or community groups that can help you cope, manage, and heal. Explore your options at FindHelp.org today, including low-cost or free health care and self-care Health Tips.
Know The Symptoms
The symptoms of mental illness can be mild and temporary or severe and persistent. This is an important distinction. There are day-to-day problems of stress or anxiety related to work deadlines, money, family situations, your boss, and more. Those can be very hard but within a day or two, they tend to disappear. Then there are consistent problems of stress, anxiety, depression, poor physical health, and declining mental health — and they appear in more dramatic ways, such as constant feeling of worry, avoiding certain situations, withdrawing from life, and more. If you think that your current situation has moved beyond the day-to-day or even if you’re not sure, it’s time to find help. Professionals and members of support groups won’t judge you.
Talk
Sometimes, the most powerful action is to voice your struggle and talk to someone else about what you’re going through. It can make you feel better, and you’ll get helpful context on and advice about your concerns. If you think talking to someone would be helpful for you right now, call 988 and use the FindHelp tool to find support for whatever you are going through.
Help For Others
If you have a family member or loved one who needs help, FindHelp is a great resource for you to begin with. You can talk about the issues you’re seeing with loved ones and learn about ways you can support them.
Find Help
It’s important to know where to find resources for yourself and the people you care about who are struggling. FindHelp has resources for mental health care. Unmet needs can be a big factor contributing to a mental health crisis. FindHelp can direct you to resources for food, housing, transit, health, money, care, work, education, and legal situations. FindHelp has been building its network and platform over the last 10 years. With the most comprehensive network of free and reduced-cost community resources, Dallas County is a part of an active network that’s already sending and receiving referrals daily, nationwide.
FindHelp offers a centralized, easy-to-search database of 5,368 free or reduced-cost programs across Dallas County, more than 30,000 in Texas, and over 310,000 nationally. This means the infrastructure is in place to help patients and families in need right away. Simply put, we are joining an existing network — not paying to build one. More than 200,000 people across Dallas County have already sought help through FindHelp networks, and nearly 1.5 million people have done so across Texas.
FindHelp’s approach encourages people to find and enroll in services themselves whenever they can, in addition to allowing providers, social workers, care coordinators, and others to navigate on their behalfs. This is an important difference that separates FindHelp from other options. Self-service increases the likelihood of success in connecting people to the social care they need.