Mental Health: An Overview
Everything you need to know about mental illnesses, including their diagnosis, treatment and more.
How does it work?
1
Find your surgery
Start by searching for your GP surgery, this will check which service you are eligible for.
2
Book an appointment
Create your account and see a doctor the very same day, at a time and place to suit you.
3
See a doctor online
Speak to a NHS-trained doctor by video, with the ability to send text and images too.
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CQC regulated
Push Doctor is regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of health and social care in England.
They are the foremost authority in our industry, assessing health providers' ability to provide people with safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care – be they offline or online doctors.
Push Doctor is registered with the CQC under the name 'Square Health', with the registration number 1-3060117803.
Our most recent inspection took place in May 2019, concluding that the service we provide is safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led – gaining a 'Good' rating overall. You can read the report in full on our CQC profile.
Secure data
Push Doctor uses the latest technologies to ensure utmost security. We utilise several layers of firewall security and encrypt all personal data to ensure it’s safe.
All users are required to go through a two-step verification process to create and restore an account. Online access to an account is protected with a password that a user creates and PD apps support touch ID technology.
When using the platform, all personal data is transmitted through the internet using secure socket Layers (SSL) technology. SSL technology causes a browser to encrypt entered information before transmitting it to our secure server. SSL technology, an industry standard, is designed to prevent a third party from capturing and viewing Personal Data.
Authorised medicines seller
Push Doctor is registered with the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and fully approved to sell medicines from our website.
We have been approved sellers since our inception, with the company number of C46132. As authorised MHRA sellers, we are approved to sell the following as and when we need to do so:
- Prescription only medicines
- General sales list medicines
- Pharmacy medicines
We regularly review the medications that we prescribe on our service, making sure to meet best practice and only ever provide outstanding care. With this, and our CQC rating, you know you are in safe hands.
GMC-registered GPs
All of our doctors are NHS-trained and registered with the General Medical Council (GMC), ensuring that you are only ever receiving the best possible care and advice.
We encourage you to familiarise yourself with our online doctors, check their GMC profiles for yourself – every doctor on our platform has one, which you can easily search the GMC's database for.
In the majority of cases, we even give a direct link to our doctors' LinkedIn pages so you can see where they have worked in the past and where they were educated.
You can also see who our medical support and data protection teams are as well.
We welcome scrutiny, and encourage you to get in touch if you have any questions, concerns or comments about the people that power Push Doctor.
What is mental health?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines mental health as
"A state of wellbeing in which the individual realises his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community".
They add that mental health is "an integral and essential component" of overall health, and so give mental health every bit as much weight as physical health.
Mental health is about more than mental disorders or disabilities. Mental health is, amongst other things, what enables us to effectively think, feel, or even interact with one another.
Poor mental health is, according to the WHO, often associated with:
- Sudden or rapid changes in circumstances
- Stressful or toxic work conditions
- Discrimination of any form
- Social exclusion
- Unhealthy lifestyles
- Physical illness
- Personality traits
- Genetic factors
What is mental illness?
Mental illness refers to a wide range of conditions that directly affect mental health. Mental illnesses can affect mood, behaviour, thinking and sometimes all three at once. Just like physical illness, mental illness can affect anyone of any age, sex or race.
Mental illnesses categorically cannot be overcome with willpower alone, to suggest that they can is to misunderstand the potency of some mental illnesses, and to discredit the individual struggle of the mental illness sufferer.
Is mental illness common?
A UK government survey from 2014 revealed the following:
- One in six adults meet the criteria for common mental disorders
- One in five women report common mental illness symptoms
- One in eight men report common mental illness symptoms
- Women are more likely than men to report severe symptoms of mental illness
- Since 2000, rates of mental illness in women have steadily increased, but remained stable in men
- Mental illness is most common in people living alone, with poor physical health or without stable employment
What are the common signs of mental illness?
According to the American Psychiatry Association, if any of the following symptoms are occurring and visible, you should speak to a doctor:
- Dramatic changes in sleeping or appetite
- Rapid, unpredictable changes in mood or depressed feelings
- Sudden urge to withdraw socially
- Loss of interest in or engagement with activities previously enjoyed
- Difficulty performing familiar tasks at school, work or home
- Raised sensitivity to sights, sounds, smells or touch
- Difficulty with concentration, memory or logical thought
- Loss of initiative or desire to participate in any activity
- Avoidance of overstimulating situations
- Feeling disconnected from yourself or your surroundings
- Strong illogical or unwarranted feelings or intuitions
- Fear or suspicion of others with little evidence
- Out of character or otherwise peculiar behaviour