Life events like separating from a partner and moving are stressful for everyone. Despite the strain, some people navigate the transition and bounce back with minimal emotional turmoil.
Others have an intense reaction that throws their mental health off balance and leads to severe depression and anxiety. Chances are they have adjustment disorder.
If you struggle with uncontrollable symptoms due to a life stressor, our Palo Alto Mind Body team can help. We combine psychiatric care, functional medicine, and integrative therapies to create personalized treatments targeting your symptoms and improving your mental health.
Call us if you’re worried about your symptoms. Meanwhile, here’s what you need to know about adjustment disorder.
An adjustment disorder develops if you have an intense emotional or behavioral response to a stressful event (stressor). Three criteria define this disorder:
You experience extreme distress that’s out of proportion to the severity of the stressor. Your distress affects your ability to function in daily life.
To be diagnosed with adjustment disorder, your symptoms must begin within three months of an identifiable stressor and end in six months.
Though not as common, the symptoms may last longer than six months. This is more likely to happen if the stressor continues, you have more than one stressor, or you don’t seek treatment.
The situations that cause your distress are typical life events, good and bad. By comparison, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops after experiencing a traumatic event.
A few stressor examples include:
You may experience one event or several. For example, you might end a relationship at the same time that work problems begin.
There are six adjustment disorder subtypes. The symptoms you have depend on the subtype:
With symptoms similar to depression, the most common being low mood, this subtype causes lack of energy, crying easily, and feeling sad and hopeless.
Anxiety causes dread, worry, nervousness, and jitteriness. You may also feel on edge and find it hard to concentrate.
As its name suggests, you feel anxious and depressed. Anxiety and depression can both cause insomnia, headaches, and body aches.
Conduct disturbance refers to behavioral symptoms. For example, you may be unusually angry, impulsive, reckless, oppositional, or easily agitated.
In this subtype, you have a mix of anxiety, depression, and behavioral symptoms.
You have an unspecified adjustment disorder if your physical and psychiatric evaluations indicate the condition, but your symptoms don’t fall under any of the other subtypes.
Intense or severe depression and anxiety may cause complications, such as suicidal thoughts and self-harm.
Many people seek relief from ongoing depression and anxiety by turning to alcohol and drugs. As a result, you could develop alcohol or substance use disorder.
Though adjustment disorder typically improves within six months, that doesn’t mean you should wait or put off seeking treatment. There’s no reason to struggle for six months or longer when our experienced team offers care that relieves your symptoms.
As functional medicine specialists, we identify all the issues affecting your emotions and behaviors and create care plans targeting your unique mental and physical needs.
We may recommend medications to improve severe depression, anger, and anxiety. Talk therapy (psychotherapy) also has an essential role. During therapy, you learn ways to cope with difficult emotions, how to change negative thoughts, and many life skills.
Your holistic care may include nutritional balancing (testing for deficiencies and recommending healthy diets and supplements) and alternative therapies.
For example, we may recommend acupuncture or a mind-body therapy like yoga — two techniques proven to reduce anxiety and lift mood.
Call our Palo Alto Mind Body team at 650-681-2900 or connect through online booking to request a consultation and take the first step toward overcoming adjustment disorder.
