Physically And Mentally Healthy

The Importance of Mental Health

2012-01-06T01:43:00.001-08:00

What is mental health?

Though no concise definition exists, mental health is basically your attitude and approach to life. Psychological, environmental, genetic, or physiological factors have a profound effect on overall mental development.

What is mental illness?

Mental illness impairs your ability to perform routine tasks, foster healthy relationships, or cope with anger or stress. It may be classified on the basis of extreme mood swings, irrational or destructive thought patterns, and behavioral problems.

How important is mental health?

Your mental health has a huge impact on every aspect of your life.

o Self-image

Good mental health means appreciating your achievements and accepting your shortcomings. A mental illness can cause an inferiority complex, a negative body image, and intense feelings of self-hate, anger, disgust, and uselessness, which could mutate into extreme depression, psycho-social disorders, or eating disorders.

o Education

Students with mental problems socially isolate themselves, and develop anxiety disorders and concentration problems. Good mental health ensures an all-round educational experience that enhances social and intellectual skills that lead to self-confidence and better grades.

o Relationships

Mental health largely contributes to the functioning of human relationships. Mental illness can hamper even basic interactions with family, friends, and colleagues. Most people suffering from mental illness find it difficult to nurture relationships, have problems with commitment or intimacy, and frequently encounter sexual health issues.

o Sleep

An inability to handle stress or anxiety can cause insomnia. Even if you mange to fall asleep, you may wake up a dozen times during the night with thoughts of what went wrong the day before or how bad tomorrow is going to be. You may develop severe sleeping disorders which leave you exhausted and less productive.

o Eating

People with mental disorders are more prone to indulging in comfort eating or emotional binges. Finding comfort in food is something we all do from time to time. But with a mental illness, it becomes difficult to control yourself. Overeating can lead to obesity, which puts you at a risk for heart disease and diabetes, in addition to creating an unhealthy body-image.

o Physical health

Your mental state directly affects your body. For example, stress can lead to hypertension or stomach ulcers. People who are mentally healthy are at a lower risk for many health complications.

So make a conscious effort to improve and maintain your mental health.

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How to Be Mentally Healthy

2012-01-06T01:42:00.003-08:00

I am mentally ill. I've told myself this since the day I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, almost ten years ago. All the conditioning from services and society, books, support, and the 'net that I absorbed on mental illness I gradually owned, used and adopted. Indeed, I became it.

Now I am "recovering". Truly, I'm in better shape than for some time. I have a diagnosis and treatment regimen and do include myself, usually, amongst the mentally ill, but I'm not as consumed with thoughts of mental illness, mental health and recovery. I'm not in denial, nor resentful of my bipolar role, which can even have advantages; I just don't recognise myself anymore as the mentally ill person I sold myself some years ago.

Recently a friend with a mental health diagnosis termed us both "disabled". I recoiled. I may use such a self-description, if only out of habit or for mercenary ends. Many with a "mental illness" are recovering more from their treatment and such self-descriptions than anything else. A micro-industry has grown up around "recovery" but the need to recover is not automatically due to definitively real causes.

Recently it occurred to me that I might not be "mentally ill"; that my diagnosis might be incorrect (I 'm not saying it is incorrect, only that it might be). Empirically "bipolar disorder" doesn't even exist; it's a convention of psychiatry. I'm therefore existentially ill. Genuine human mental disturbance and illness exist, and there has been positive movement in their treatment. However, without greater awareness, "recovery" and mental illness can be mutually reinforcing: the diagnosis creating the treatment that feeds the secondary illness that will necessitate recovery.

To reclaim our health and identity, the idea of "recovery" must eventually be dispensed with. "Recovery" reminds one of what one is recovering from, reinforcing the presence and reality of "mental illness". It enables disablement.

Am I "recovered"? I'm better. I've "taken a journey", from the edge of a cliff into a brick wall, under the wall, backwards through the exit into the light. I've accepted myself as much as I'm likely to; not much, but there again I can be an objectionable character! Still, I've defied and survived myself. I've seen myself, using the bipolar idea, as two halves of a soul locked in civil war, but there's been only one of me all along, as stubborn and deluded as ever.

As a thought experiment, imagine that there is no "mental illness" or "recovery" needed from. Burdensome beliefs and conditionings, and even the most positive outcomes borne of them, are gone. What word sums up what someone mentally ill wants? I say, without hesitation, "Freedom!" From suffering, services, medication, self-labeling and stigma, and supremely from oneself as "mentally ill", "disabled".

This is why I want to and will completely "recover" who and what I'm. I'm not "disabled", "mentally ill" or "recovering" or "recovered". I know exactly who and what I am. I'm Jeremy. That's enough.

Read Mental Health Recovery Now by Jeremy Clarke

Mental Health Recovery Now by Jeremy Clarke is a powerful, practical, inspiring guide to recovering mental health from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other mental health conditions and disorders. Based on trainings to mental health services staff, supplemented by hands-on approaches to recovering mental health after illness, this exciting new development in attitudes to the successful transformation of mental health includes new and unusual articles and interviews with mental health professionals and service user mavericks. This book is essential to a more profound and penetrating understanding of what it is like to recover, what it means to recover and why recovery is necessary and indeed the right of mental health services users.

Concept of Mental Health

2012-01-06T01:42:00.001-08:00

It is easier to define mental illness than mental health. Even though we don't always suffer any apparent diagnosable mental ailments it is evident that in regard to mental health a man differs from the other. Some of us are mentally healthiera than the others.

Mental health is the combination of genetic, biological, psychological and environmental factors. It is the absence of mental disorder. It includes an individual's ability to enjoy life and attain a balance between activities of life and effort to achieve the capacity to face stresses and adversities in a very calm and composed manner. It is also an expression of emotions that signifies a successful adaptation to a range of demands. A mentally healthy person can work productively and effectively for the community he lives in.

There is no universally accepted official definition of mental health. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, prevalent customs and conventions, condition of society, political, and social aspects in which he lives in are all the determining factors in deciding the matter of sanity of one's mind setup.That a person is mentally healthy can be ascertained from certain characteristics.

First, the ability to enjoy life without worrying for the future or thinking about the past is the sure sign of healthiness of mind. The secret of life is to see the passing of present time. Sometimes people make themselves miserable by giving constant attention to what can't be cured or about the unpredictable. This is uncongenial to health of mind.

Secondly, the ability to handle stress or trauma and bounce back from adversity indicates mental sanity This characteristic of resilience is shared by those who can handle the situations of stress effortlessly.

Thirdly, greater mental health is the result of balance in life. In our life we constantly need to balance number of things. As for example, we'll be treated as 'loners 'if we can't make balance between time spent socially and time spent alone.Similarly we need to balance between several thing like work and play. Sleep and wakefulness, rest and movement, time spent indoors and time spent outdoors.

Fourthly, emotional and cognitive flexibility is the sign of mental power. Some people hold very rigid opinions and no amount of discussion can change them. These people suffer from stress for their rigid expectations that they hold. Mentally healthy persons open the feelings and emotions instead of shutting them off in the dark chamber of mind.

Sixthly, we all have natural gifts or the inner capabilities. Some use their potentials and others seem to have destroyed them. Mentally sound persons are in the process actualizing their potentials.

Seventh, focusing on the worry topics and discussing them with others is the sign of mental health. Deconstruction of those worries which plague you constantly leads to good health of mind.

These are just a few of the concepts that are important to achieve mental health. In reality to attain complete healthiness of mind one should be free, flexible, open minded, positive, energetic and above all optimistic.

Mental ailments are not always apparent. They are neither detectable sometimes. Mental health is the sum total of different factors taken together. A mentally healthy persons contribute a lot to the society. There is no officially accepted definition of mental health yet it can be assumed. Different social aspects,customs cultures etc, all influence the mental health. So different societies groom the persons differently. Accordingly they differ in mentality, mood and temperament. But some common characteristics are there to consider a person mentally healthy. With these characteristics a person can be treated as mentally balanced.