Tips and Tricks to help improve your depression and Personal hygiene.

12/2/2022

Tips and Tricks to Help Improve Your Depression and Personal Hygiene

Written by Bridgette Koukos, MA, LCPC, NCC

Before diving into tips and tricks to improve personal hygiene, let's quickly review what depression is. Depression is a common mental health disorder and set of symptoms that may negatively affect how you feel, the way you think, and how you act. Depression affects an estimated 1 in 15 adults (6.7%) in any given year. 1 in 6 people (16.6%) will experience depression at some time in their life. Depression is a condition that can be treatable with either medication management via a prescribing physician and/or therapy/counseling treatment.

Depression can include, but is not limited to, feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed, fatigue, feelings of hopelessness, poor sleep patterns, as well as suicidal ideations. People who live with depression may find themselves engaging in behavioral patterns and avoiding certain tasks, both healthy and unhealthy. Many individuals with depression find that there are more days than not when they do not have the energy or motivation to shower, brush their teeth, change their underwear, tidy up the house, or wash a pile of dirty dishes. What are normal daily habits for others, can seem unobtainable for those with depression.

Here are some helpful tips and tricks that can help improve depression and poor hygiene.

Move more often: Getting outside with fresh air is idea; however, with winter upon us going outside to take a walk, realistically may not happen. So while you’re home and there's a commercial break on the TV, get up and walk around, or even walk up and down the stairs a few times.
Maintain connections with friends and family, even for 5 to 10 minutes daily: This could look like communicating via text, phone, or FaceTime. This is something that can help reduce the isolative behaviors that are often associated with depression.
Set small goals for yourself: I am a firm believer in taking a big task and breaking it down into smaller more obtainable goals. For instance, if you need to clean the kitchen, don't set the goal to clean the ENTIRE kitchen. This will immediately result in feeling overwhelmed and the potential inability to follow through. Instead, have a small goal to accomplish such as (a) emptying and/or loading the dishwasher; (b) sweeping or mopping the floor.
Using Mouthwash When You Can’t Brush Your Teeth: Obviously brushing and flossing our teeth is the best, but mouthwash is something that takes little to no effort and is better than not engaging in any oral hygiene at all.
Set personal hygiene alarms on your phone: Something I found to be helpful is not allowing oneself to turn off the alarm until you get up to complete said task.
Dry shampoo and baby wipes can come in handy: When we are having those really bad moments where we have gone days without showering or washing our hair; it's okay to get creative and use dry shampoo to help re-freshen your hair, or baby wipes to help clean and stay fresh.
Take a seat: Remember depression exhausts the body, and it can make the easiest of tasks (i.e., standing) extremely difficult; so investing in a shower seat can be helpful and can make showering easier.
Finally, and most importantly, build a routine: We want to slowly build a routine, this will help alleviate feelings of stress and being overwhelmed. Having a routine will tell us what days we will focus on what. I have worked with adolescents AND adults to build what looks similar to a chore chart to help clients remember their routine responsibilities. For example, Mon & Wed & Sat can be shower days, and Mondays can be washing your body and shaving underarm & legs, Wednesday is when you wash your body and shampoo and condition your hair and Sat can be a quick body wash. Building routine also looks like making sure we routinely are changing out of our dirty undergarments and stinky socks and at minimum cleaning teeth 1x/day.