What does your mind conjure up when you see the words ‘mental health’? Yeah, the phrase sucks with all sorts of connotations, doesn’t it?
When you think of the phrase Mental Health… is it about
- People who are strange or not normal.
- Mental illness is a stigma or label to be avoided or kept silent
- Referring to issues of inability of mind and behavior.
- A term that is a label to describe crazy, crazy, weird people.
- Pathologies such as depression, schizophrenia.
- Or even the Department of Mental Health in your State Department of Health?
The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his community.”
It’s not the first thing that comes to many people’s minds with that phrase, is it?
Part of the problem is the actual term ‘mental health’: it conjures up images of disease, but the word health is the opposite of disease: if we have health, we have wellness, not disease.
Formally, it is a term used to describe a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or the absence of a mental disorder. From the perspective of the discipline of positive psychology or holism, mental health can include an individual’s ability to enjoy life and achieve a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.
The problem lies in the term itself: it doesn’t accurately describe what it means.
So perhaps mental well-being or wellness is best suited when you encourage or do something positive about your own inner health.
Good mental health can also be defined as the absence of a major mental condition (for example, one of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, IV diagnoses), although recent evidence from positive psychology suggests that mental health is more than the mere absence of a mental disorder or illness. Therefore, the social, cultural, physical and educational impact can affect a person’s mental health.
We live in a society that cares a lot about physical health or wellness/wellness – look at the tremendous technological, pharmaceutical and research advances that happen every day.
Consider all the resources for physical health that we have constantly put before us: weight loss programs and diets, gyms and exercise programs, physical activities, sports, obesity problems, nutritional supplements, etc.
Where is the equivalent education and drive for mental wellbeing though? We easily take steps to ensure we avoid infection, injury, and organic conditions (for example, the heart); however, what do we do to avoid the negative effects on our mental well-being?
So do you think about your own inner health so to speak? And take care of it?
This is vitally important considering that depression and anxiety affect many, let alone the most serious mental illness diagnoses.
In families, do we place as much conscious focus on mental well-being as on physical health? Many know a lot about good activities for physical well-being, but are we as informed about the equivalents of good mental health as we raise and teach our children?
And what state doesn’t have an underfunded mental health department?
We have lost the concept of a holistic approach to our bodies, lives and society. We compartmentalize too easily, and we basket mental health too hard or simply neglect it.
We have ‘abnormalized’ mental health, instead of seeing it as important to our well-being and a normal part of life, even if someone is suffering from mental illness.
People suffering from adverse mental well-being conditions are still ‘normal’ people, just like an injured person is ‘normal’, or just like a deaf person is normal.
