Suffering an injury can take its toll on your body and put you on the sidelines for a while, which can actually then have a knock-on effect on your mental health. In fact, any physical injury can end up having an enormous impact on your emotional wellbeing and make the recovery process much harder and longer which is why it is so important to be wary of the impact that physical injuries can have on mental health.
Interfering with Life
One of the main reasons that people suffering mentally when they suffer an injury is that it can stop them from being able to live like they normally do. When you have an injury which can make tasks like getting dressed, going shopping or even working challenging or impossible, it can understandably cause a great deal of frustration. Inevitably, this means that people end up with a very different lifestyle to what they are used to and may even begin to feel isolated if the injury stops them from socialising.
Stopping Exercise
Another way that a physical injury affects mental wellbeing is because it can stop people from exercising. Exercise is, of course, incredibly important to mental health and particularly those that see exercise as a big part of their life and/or are working towards certain goals. It can be a vicious cycle, because in addition to the frustration of not being able to exercise, a long-term injury could also affect your health and weight which would then again impact your mental health.
Anxiety Surrounding the Activity
Many people also suffer from anxiety after suffering an injury, especially when it comes to the activity that caused the injury. The most obvious example of this is driving as many motorists feel stressed and anxious about getting behind the wheel again after being involved in an accident, which can then cause more anger and frustration as well as interfere with your life even once you have recovered.
PTSD
Following this point, PTSD can also be a very serious consequence of an injury and cause significant damage to a person’s mental health for a long time after they have physically recovered. Often, this occurs when an individual has not been treated properly since the injury by medical staff. In situations like this, it is worth speaking to medical negligence solicitors that will be able to work on your behalf to seek compensation that can be helpful for putting the incident behind you.
It is clear that a physical injury can cause significant damage to an individual’s mental well-being and it is vital that people are aware of this and find ways to look after their mental health if they ever experience an injury that interferes with their emotional wellbeing.
