What Is Mental Health? How to Improve Mental Health

Mental health refers to your emotional and psychological state of wellness and stability. As with your physical health, it’s easy to disregard your mental well-being when nothing is wrong. Still, when something goes awry, it’s hard to think of anything else. Mood, personality, and substance use disorders are possible problems people could face regarding their psychological wellness. In these cases, professional help and treatment can help improve the situation.

Mental health is essential to your holistic wellness as a human being. If you suffer from a mental health condition, your quality of life diminishes. In circumstances like these, some turn to a form of self-medication via substance abuse. Others engage in self-harm or suicidal ideation. In short, these “invisible illnesses” lay a very heavy burden on those afflicted by them.

For a long time, mental health treatment faced a stigma. Many people used to view the acknowledgment of mental or emotional problems as a sign of weakness. More and more people have since recognized the folly of this presupposition. Your brain is an organ like any other, so treatment for depression or anxiety is no different from treatment for heart disease or cancer.

Major health institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and World Health Organization (WHO) have all spearheaded initiatives highlighting the importance of both mental health and suicide prevention.

A mental health disorder is a psychological or emotional problem impairing your essential quality of life. For instance, you might feel incapable of handling the stresses of life or see a large decrease in your social well-being. While it can sometimes prove difficult to define what constitutes mental normalcy in the first place, disorders are easy to spot due to the inordinate amount of anguish they can cause those who experience them.

There are numerous different mental health conditions capable of wreaking havoc on a person’s wellbeing. Here are just a few types of mental disorders to consider:

• Body dysmorphia: People suffering from body dysmorphia see their physical selves in an irrational and unrealistic light. It’s common for people to develop eating disorders to mitigate how they feel about their weight. The body positivity movement aims to reduce the likelihood of people developing these disorders by encouraging a more accepting society. This condition is also notable for its prevalence among adolescents.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder: This disorder causes people to ritualize their behaviors to an unhealthy degree. Someone might feel they need to wash their hands ten times in a row before being clean. Another person might feel incapable of performing even basic tasks unless they get their daily routine just right. Mental health treatment can help people deal with OCD.
• Mood disorders: Both environmental and biological factors might lead to people developing mood-related conditions. Anxiety disorders cause people to feel inordinate levels of fear or stress, while depressive conditions like bipolar disorder might lead someone to experience deep levels of despair. Depression and anxiety are also key risk factors for developing substance abuse problems.
• Post-traumatic stress disorder: People who have gone through very tough and disturbing situations are most likely to develop PTSD. Little triggers can make them relive their worst moments as if they were happening anew. As with other mental health problems, treatment can help reduce the severity of this disorder.
• Schizophrenia: This form of psychosis leads people to hallucinate and hear voices that aren’t really there. Early warning signs of this mental illness tend to appear in young adulthood. Caregivers can help guide the afflicted through this diagnosis to achieve a sense of stability.

Good mental health care can help you both prevent the development of certain disorders and mitigate any issues with which you currently struggle. Here are a few tips to improve your personal mental health:

• Ask for support. Turn to your family members, friends, and loved ones for support when struggling with your mental health. They can help nurse you back to your full potential as you also seek out professional help from mental health services, such as therapy.
• Practice self-care. Be kind to yourself as you learn to live with your condition. Read self-help books. Practice mindfulness. Take care of your overall health at the same time you tend to your mental and emotional health in particular. For example, eating well and exercising is as important to managing stress and other negative emotions as it is to keeping yourself fit.
• Speak with a mental health professional. Meet with a qualified mental health care provider to talk about your issues. Psychotherapy (talking with a psychologist every week) and psychiatry (receiving medication for mental health issues) might both prove useful. Avoid self-diagnosing by reading fact sheets about mental health issues online.

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