Mental health is more than just the absence of mental illness; it involves the presence of positive human thought, feeling, and behaviour. It is a state of well-being that enables individuals to thrive in their lives, relationships, and work. It’s about optimal functioning and acknowledging both strengths and deficits. A key aspect of mental health is the ability to experience the full range of one’s psychological and emotional world while still living a meaningful life.
Here are some points about what mental health encompasses:
- Focus on Well-Being: Mental health focuses on building success and helping people flourish, rather than solely reducing distress. It’s about adding a focus on mental health to the focus on mental illness.
- Positive Psychology: Mental health aligns with positive psychology, which studies what makes life worth living, including concepts such as optimism, hope, self-efficacy, and resilience.
- Not Just Symptom-Free: Mental health is not just about being free from symptoms of mental illness but also about fostering a sense of stability, positivity, and gratitude. It is about having a healthy brain that supports better decision making, leading to greater happiness, physical health, and success.
Reasons to Prioritise Mental Health
Prioritising mental health is crucial for overall well-being and a fulfilling life. Here are some key reasons why people should make it a priority:
- Improved Overall Health: A healthy brain leads to better decision-making, which in turn improves physical health, wealth, and success in all areas of life. Mental health is as important as physical health. If you have a health problem you would likely seek help from a doctor. It can be valuable to treat your mental health with a similar level of care, and seek help from a therapist when you need it.
- Enhanced Emotional Well-being: Mental health includes the ability to feel stable, positive, and grateful, and to live in a way that makes you feel proud. Prioritising mental health allows you to connect with and manage a range of emotions effectively. It means being open to experiencing and accepting what is, without needing to avoid or manage psychological pain.
- Prevention of Mental Illness: By focusing on mental health, you can buffer against mental illness. Taking care of your mental processes requires the same kind of maintenance as taking care of your physical hygiene. If you allow negative thoughts to accumulate, it is like allowing your house to get messy.
- Improved Relationships: When you take care of yourself, you become more available to others and your most important relationships. Mental health supports the ability to have caring, compassionate, and supportive relationships.
- Increased Resilience: Mental health involves developing resilience and the capacity to manage stress effectively. Instead of trying to control the uncontrollable, a person can choose to commit their energy to leading a full life.
- Living a Valued Life: Prioritising mental health allows you to live consistently with chosen values and to pursue goals for the intrinsic pleasure of doing so. It allows you to align your life with what gives it purpose and meaning. If you value your health, or your relationships, it is worthwhile to take care of your mental health.
- Personal Growth: Paying attention to what you want to see expand in yourself and others enhances well-being. You can use moments of difficulty as an opportunity for healing.
- Better Self-Care: Prioritising your mental health allows you to establish and maintain healthy boundaries, ensuring you have the energy and resources to live your best life.
- Reduced Self-Criticism: By prioritising mental health you can work to reduce self-criticism, and instead develop self-compassion which has a positive impact on your mental state. When you treat yourself unkindly, it can stimulate stress. Self-compassion can help to move you forward in important ways.
- Increased Productivity: When you prioritise your mental health, you are able to balance your mind states for optimal productivity and well-being. You can better manage your emotions and make better decisions.
In summary, mental health is a state of well-being that involves thriving, not just surviving. Prioritising mental health is essential for a balanced life, and leads to increased resilience, improved relationships, and an overall greater quality of life.