10th
of this month (October) we are celebrating world mental health day. Mental
health is important at every stage of life, from childhood
and adolescence through adulthood. World
Mental Health Day incepted in 1992, is a day for global mental health
education, awareness and advocacy. But even
after 22 years of celebrating this day, whenever I ask anyone, I come across, whether
they know the real meaning of Mental health, nearly every one answer is “if you
don’t have any mental illness or mental problems then you are mentally
healthy”. This just conveys the meaning that mental health is just being devoid
of mental illness. But even the World health organization has categorically
said the being healthy is not just being devoid of illness. I also tried to
search the web to check whether there is comprehensible explanation of mental
health only to find that most of the sites give brief statement of mental
health and just shifts to the content of symptoms of mental problems and
illnesses which only emphasizes that efforts have not been taken to give a well-structured
idea about mental health.
The
obvious fact is that mental health is not just being devoid of mental illness
and lack of mental health or poor mental health need not necessarily mean that
a person has mental problems or illness. Mental health includes our emotional,
psychological, and social well-being. Mental health is characterized by mental
functions that result in productive activities, fulfilling relationship with
others and the ability to adapt to changes and cope with adversity. It is
determined by how we think, feel, and act. It is also determined by, how we
handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. In other words mental health
is the status which is before the onset of mental problems or illnesses or lack
of mental health or poor mental health is a status what can be termed as “prone
to mental problem or illness”.
Being
Mentally Healthy is a status that allows people to:
·
Realize their full potential
·
Cope with the stresses of life effectively
·
Work productively
·
Make meaningful contributions to themselves
their families and communities
·
Connect with others without barriers
·
Stay positive
·
Maintain adequate physical activity
·
Have no reservations in Helping others
·
Act in an emotionally balanced way even in
demanding situations
People
who are mentally healthy have:
·
A sense of contentment.
·
A zest for living and the ability to laugh and
have fun.
·
The ability to deal with stress and bounce
back from adversity.
·
A sense of meaning and purpose, in both their
activities and their relationships.
·
The flexibility to learn new things and adapt
to change.
·
A balance between work and play, rest and
activity, etc.
·
The ability to build and maintain fulfilling
relationships.
·
Self-confidence and high self-esteem.
There
is still a lot of confusion related to understanding the symptoms of mental
illness and lack of mental health. Many a times identifying mental problems or
illness has been based of deterioration from the pre-morbid state in the
functional levels, sleep, interests, appetite, and various other behavior and
cognitive symptoms. But in the dynamically opposite paradigm the status of
mental health is determined by how a person is able to achieve the fullest of
his potential “ the self actualized state”. The lack of mental health is
determined by how much he is lagging behind both in his focus on achieving the
state and the actual lagging which means the synptoms of mental illness will
not be the same as symptoms of lack of mental health. Some of the symtoms which
indicate poor mental health are
·
Unproductive, under productive lifestyle
·
Laziness and lethargy in activities due to
poor motivation
·
Poor work - life – relationship - relaxation
balance
·
Poor self confidence and self motivation
·
Excessive dependency and need for support to
do even very simple tasks
·
Frequent complaints of victimization
·
Frequent seeking of approval of others
·
Expression of feelings of insecurity and fear
of failure
·
Uncontrolled anger and aggressive attitudes
·
Tendency to blame others environment and
society for their failures
·
Irrational arguments with the intention to
protect their self esteem
·
Poor listening skills
·
Inability to reach out for help and support
whenever necessary
·
Antisocial behavior
But
just like the causes of mental illness the causes of poor mental health can
also be put in a bio-psycho- social framework. Some of the important causes are
·
Regression to “survival of the fittest” attitude
and trying to achieve by hook or crook, to be in a better position than others,
rather than focusing on achieving one’s own goal.
·
Consistent unhealthy lifestyle both on the
personal and social front,
·
Consistent physical ill-health
·
Discrimination and perceived discrimination
or exclusion based on social status, gender, education, performance
·
Ineffective parenting
·
Traumatic incidents in life and experiences
of human rights violations.
·
Rapid social change
·
Physical emotional and sexual abuse including
bullying or harassment during childhood or adolescence
·
Poor connection or attachment to the primary
caretaker early in life.
·
Feeling lonely, isolated, unsafe, confused,
or abused as an infant or young child.
·
The absence of one or more confiding relationships,
·
Learned helplessness, the negative
experiences that lead to a belief that you’re helpless and that you have little
control over the situations in your life.
Come
let’s understand the real meaning of mental health and celebrate the world mental
health. While we take out our time to create awareness about mental disorders, lets assign
more time to preserve and enhance our
mental health and that of all others around us. On this important day let’s vow
to
·
Take proactive initiative starting from
ourselves to bring about the required change.
·
Overcome the tendency to survive and start
living our life
·
Dedicate adequate time self and for every
other role we take be it parent, child, sibling, friend and social being
·
Seeking supports to solve our limitations and
problems and reach out to people to help them to solve theirs
·
Develop productive goals and start pursuing
it without allowing the barriers to stop our venture.
·
Pursue our goals not with a sense of winning
but enjoy the course and achieving happiness with our success
·
Focus on developing and expressing positive
emotions
·
Avoid suppressing our negative emotions and
find appropriate ventilation to our negative emotions,
·
Create empathetic understandings of others and develop
effective workable relationships.
·
Avoid blaming others for our problems and
develop problem solving and decision making abilities,
·
Stop discriminating or ill-treating others to
gain dominance and focus on respecting others to maintain our self esteem.
·
Avoid criticizing others instead motivate
them
·
Stop blaming the ills in the society, take a
collective responsibility for all those issues which we feel as negative in the
society
·
Enjoy the nature and its beauty
·
Bring out the creative talents within
ourselves for the benefit of self and society
·
Take efforts to create the awareness about
mental health and its importance
·
Overcome the stigma related to mental illness
and help people with mental illness, psychological disorders and emotional
problems
·
By being happy and making others happy
Preserving
mental and social health is the best way to prevent mental disorders. Let start
our journey in this direction with the slogan
“We are for ourself but we care for all”
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