When Should You Go to the Emergency Room (ER) for Mental Health Breakdown?

When having a mental breakdown, your primary concern should be to get help immediately, making a trip to the emergency room the best option. During a mental breakdown, you might feel isolated, primarily if it occurs late at night.

A mental breakdown can make you think about whether you must endure the situation or seek help immediately. However, you can visit the ER in Houston during mental breakdowns to seek the assistance needed.

What Are Medical Health Problems Treated by ERs?

ERs notice an increase in the number of people visiting them with mental breakdowns. Mental health complications account for six percent of adult visits to ERs, besides seven percent of pediatric visits. The increase was particularly severe during the height of the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2019.

Emergency rooms address various mental health problems, such as bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, panic attacks, depression, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder. The names of mental health problems mentioned aren’t comprehensive but indicate that you must ensure proper care if you feel you are at risk for having severe symptoms of having an episode of psychosis.

When to Consider Visiting an ER?

Specialists helping people address mental health breakdowns suggest people should visit ERs when they are concerned with their safety. It indicates that if you think your safety or someone you love is compromised and might severely hurt themselves or have thoughts of suicide, seeking immediate medical help by visiting the emergency room in Houston, TX, is optimal. If you cannot consult a doctor or find it challenging to see a mental health center, an emergency room might be your only option. Besides thoughts of self-harm or suicide, you must also consider going to the emergency room if you experience visual or auditory hallucinations, delusions, harmful OCD symptoms, severe side effects of medications, aggression or assault, severe insomnia, confusion, paranoia, and mania.

You might feel overwhelmed when visiting an ER because they are often loud, crowded, and chaotic, with long waiting lines. However, emergency services are available to help everyone at all hours. In addition, emergency rooms aim to make you stay comfortable with warm blankets, food, and drinks when assessing you to determine a course of action.

What to Expect on Arrival at the Emergency Room?

After arriving at the emergency room, you might expect immediate care for the situation confronting you. Instead, a team of doctors, nurses, psychologists, and psychotherapists will see you, asking questions about your symptoms, when the symptoms started, your mental health history, and appropriate medical diagnosis.

You can also expect to complete paperwork that you might think is menial. However, the medical team needs the paperwork to ascertain your medical history and insurance status. Therefore you must work patiently to answer all questions in the forms because it helps the medical team to develop a treatment plan specifically for you.

You will receive crisis counseling, a physical exam, and medication to rule out medical problems.

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What If You Need Additional Help?

If the medical team at the ER thinks you need additional help because you’re a threat to yourself or others, they might decide to keep you at the hospital for intensive inpatient treatment or suggest outpatient treatment. If you were brought to the ER involuntarily because of your behavior, you might have to stay at the hospital or another facility for three days for observation and treatment. Further, hospital stays require legal consent from a court of law, especially if you were admitted involuntarily. However, in most cases, the emergency room permits you to return home by the end of the day with a referral to see a mental health therapist twice weekly.

Mental health breakdowns are terrifying when you’re affected. However, medical professionals are ready and waiting to help you if you visit them. Going to an emergency room will depend on your symptoms. Most importantly, it concerns how you feel and whether your safety is compromised. Therefore, if you or your loved one experiences the warning signs of a mental health breakdown, you must seek support from an emergency room near you or even a crisis hotline. As long as you are honest about your feelings and where you have been, you can receive the treatment required to assist in your recovery.

Ascent Emergency Room assists many patients with mental health breakdowns by diagnosing their condition and providing the care they need. Consult them if you or your loved one has a mental health crisis to receive the required care.