How Physical Therapy Can Help You Mentally
If you’ve suffered a setback with your mobility, be it from an injury, an illness, or some other ailment, physical therapy can help you regain your strength, your range of motion, and your flexibility. In fact, it can leave you better off physically than you were before the ailment sidetracked you. But the benefits of physical therapy go beyond the physical. Physical therapy patients find that their mental health gets a boost too.
That’s right. In addition to helping the muscles in your hand grab hold tighter, physical therapy has a way of making the muscles in your face more frequently form a smile. So just what’s going on?
Regaining What Was Lost
One of the major reasons that the benefits of physical therapy go beyond the physical is that the negative effects of injury are likewise not limited to the body. When you lose mobility, you lose independence. Tasks you used to perform on your own now either have to be abandoned, or require help from someone else.
In some cases, patients come to us after losing the ability to take part in hobbies like making crafts, playing music, doing projects around the house, or even playing with their grandkids. For others, brushing their teeth, bathing, getting dressed, cooking meals, and other activities of daily living have become team sports.
In these cases, it’s not uncommon for depression to accompany the physical symptoms. Physical therapy brings with it a return to the things a patient has lost, the things they miss. With that comes a feeling of independence and a return to feeling like themselves.
Alleviating Fear
While an injury happens suddenly, we find that many folks who come in for physical therapy had lived in fear of just such a setback for a long time. Often times, the injury is a result of lost strength, flexibility, or range of motion. In these cases, loss of mobility was a persistent fear for a long time. For these folks, physical therapy may seem like only a temporary fix; a quick patch up, then back to waiting for the other shoe to drop. But a funny thing tends to happen in physical therapy; folks leave in better shape than they were in before their injury.
That’s because physical therapy is much more than a quick fix. Physical therapists work with patients to build a strong foundation of strength, flexibility, and mobility, along with balance and equilibrium. Patients learn how to move. They learn how to better take care of their bodies prior to, during, and after physical activity.
This is why folks who attend physical therapy and actively engage in the work it entails have a lower rate of reinjury than other folks. With this newfound strength and knowledge, these patients regain not only their physical ability, but peace of mind to go with it.
Schedule an Appointment
Physical therapy at Princeton Health Care Center is about restoring quality of life. If you’re in need of physical therapy in the Mercer County West Virginia area, please come in and see us. You can give us a ring today at 304-487-3458 to make an appointment.