Mental Health week is just around the corner in Canada and runs from May 4 – 10, 2015, while the USA has designated all of May as being Mental Health month. This means mental health and wellness will soon be under the spotlight!
Just what exactly is mental health?
Wikipedia defines mental health as:
A level of psychological well-being, or an absence of a mental disorder; it is the “psychological state of someone who is functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioral adjustment”. From the perspective of positive psychology or holism, mental health may include an individual’s ability to enjoy life, and create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.
Mental health can encompass many different aspects of your life, both personal and professional, and it’s all about striking the right balance between the two areas. What is going on around you, that which personally impacts you, can sometimes cause an imbalance that can present challenges in having optimum mental health. This could include such things as being unemployed, stress, grieving a loved one, parenting, work/life balance, etc.
Mental health is the foundation for our well-being and it involves how you think, feel, act and interact with all those around you. We all have set backs and challenges that we face in life at one time or another. Mental health isn’t about avoiding these so they become larger than they need to be. It’s more about learning to cope with the stressors in life and feeling you are living life fully despite whatever challenge you may be facing at any particular moment.
It’s making the most of the reality whether you like it or not.
I know how difficult this can be from my own experience when I went through a very difficult time in my life. A turning point for me was learning to live in the moment and really value all that I did have, rather than focusing on what I did not. Putting energy in a positive direction on a regular basis brought me mental health!
Mental illnesses, on the other hand, are health problems that affect the way we think about ourselves, relate to others, and interact with the world around us. They affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and may include depression, anxiety and eating disorders, addictive behaviors, etc.
People who live with a mental illness can and do thrive, just as people without a mental illness may experience poor mental health. The two are not intertwined.
The Canadian Mental Health Association references five characteristics of mental health:
1) The ability to enjoy life and live in the present. Do you practice mindfulness throughout the day or are you always thinking of tomorrow, today?
2) Resilience and how you bounce back from adversity. How well do you cope with stress?
3) Balance and if you are allocating the right amount of time between different areas of you life. Do you have a work/life balance so there is a healthy balance between your work and play?
4) Self-actualization, knowing all about your strengths and making the most of them. What have you made of the gifts you have been given?
5) Flexibility and being well balanced emotionally. Do you have strong opinions on a few topics with no room for being open to other views?
I was interested to see how I stacked up in these 5 areas and found a quick quiz that took me 3 minutes to complete. It’s called the Mental Health Tracker and it offers you the ability to assess how you currently measure up, giving you suggestions on how you can improve your score in certain areas if need be.
If you are interested in exploring this further, this mental health help guide provides more details on what mental health is and it shares a variety of tips on how you can improve yours, such as limiting unhealthy negative habits like worrying. It also describes risk factors that you will want to try and avoid as much as possible. You may also find it useful to refresh yourself with some of the resources I provided in last month’s blog on Brain Awareness Week which tie into brain health.
The good news is that mental health is attainable in both your professional and personal life.
As Mental Health week and Mental Health month approach us, I’d encourage everyone to take a few moments to assess your current mental health state and look to see if there are any areas that you need to fine tune.
Life is short. Let’s all put our energy into making the most of the time we have.
0
0
0
0
Leave a Comment