Ronald Kessler, professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School, led a two-year study polling 9,000 adults nationwide using the World Health Organizations diagnostic mental-health survey.

His findings:

29% anxiety disorders 25% impulse control disorders 20% some sort of mood disorders 12.1% suffer from social phobia 9.5% Oppositional-defiant disorder 8.1% Attention deficit/hyper activity disorder

Most mental illnesses begin in adolescence or early adulthood, and more than one disorder will often strike at the same time. While there certainly are a large number of people in this country suffering from mental illness, do all these people need to be placed on medication to take care of these problems? There are approximately 22 million Americans currently taking psychotropic medications, many for mild conditions. Kessler's study suggest that close to 60% of the people with serious disorders received no treatment between 2000 and 2003, and half of those who received treatment did not even meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental disorder. This may be due in part to the fact that people are going to their general practitioners for treatment of mental health disorders by an increase of 150% in the past 10 years. But only 12.7% of patients obtained "an acceptable standard of care" because although well meaning, these doctors do not have the specialized knowledge to treat these patients. (Harvard Magazine, July/August 2006)

There is another way to relieve yourself of many of the mental health issues that are invading your quality of life. Use of Neuro-linguistic programming can easily relieve you of many of these issues. Think about it: your physiology is controlled by your thoughts, and your thoughts are controlled by you. The beauty of NLP is that you can change the way you think, which can result in the decrease of many of the symptoms that create the diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. Hypnotist and NLP practitioners utilize their techniques to change the strategies that were learned and are located in the unconscious mind to strategies that work better for the client using the client's own self-knowledge in the process. In many cases there is no need to help the pharmacological businesses get richer as you put their chemicals into your body and hope that your kidneys and liver are not damaged as a result; over time, your body will definitely have some sort of reaction to clearing the toxins these very strong medications put into your body.

I know, for I had direct experience with this particular issue long before I learned how to use the power of my own unconscious mind. And let me tell you, I was very happy to tell my ex-psychiatrist that I do indeed have much better ways of dealing with most things psychiatric in nature than she ever will, and have proved it in the intervening years, for I now have been psychiatrist- and medication-free for several years without any relapses despite personal or professional setbacks. That is how strong your mind can be once you learn how to use it to gain a joyful and passionate life without the use of medication in most cases.

I would invite you to research the neuro-linguistic professionals in your area and find some one who can help you to alleviate the common fears, anxieties and lack of self-esteem that can make life feel uncomfortable and unfulfilling. You will be surprised at how easily and quickly your perception of life can change allowing you to live life to the fullest.