-


What exactly is Mental Health?




We all have mental health just like physical health. Humans are imperfectly perfect. Just as our body might develop some physical problem, so can our mind. Globally 1 in 5 people face mental health issues and most of them don’t even know it. WHO defines mental health as, “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes their potential, can cope with the normal stressors of life, is able to work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make contributions to the society they live in”.

How to View Mental Health?

It’s best to think of mental health on a continuum, rather than the extremes i.e., mentally ill or mentally well. We are all on the continuum and we move up and down based on factors such as genetic makeup and upbringing, our life circumstances, and the stressors we are under. At one end of the continuum, we have mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, etc and on the other end, we have positive mental health or mental well-being.

Why is Mental Well-being Important?

It’s important to acknowledge that our brain goes through so much throughout the day that it’s an extraordinary achievement to feel mentally well.
Mental health is involved in a lot of day-to-day activities of our life, such as thinking, feeling, and reacting. It affects how we handle situations and stress. Aren’t these things pretty much all we do in a day?
Positive mental health directs you toward fulfillment, confidence, and flourishment. To reach one’s full potential and live a satisfying life one needs to move up the continuum toward mental well-being.
Being mentally healthy means being able to cope with difficult times, feeling in control, being confident, being content, having a positive image of self in mind, building meaningful relationships, and handling and communicating emotions or needs. Mental health is not just the absence of mental illness there’s much more to it.
There are treatments available to improve mental health issues, just like there are treatments for physical well-being. Having access to these treatments is the road to gradually moving up the mental health continuum.



Hitakshi Varma

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Diasporic Disconnect Amidst Urban Setting in Students

-
Image
 The Diasporic Disconnect Amidst Urban Setting in Students  - By Drishti Haldia (MSc. Applied Psychology, Sem II) Automat by Edward Hopper (1927): The painting depicts isolation and urban loneliness.  “ Imagine standing by a window at night, on the sixth or seventeenth or forty-third floor of a building. The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can‘t reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure .” -Olivia Lang What is Diaspora?  Diaspora refers to a population or group of people who originated from a specific geographic location but currently reside in different regions or countries. It is very re...
Read more

THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND THE “FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT” PHENOMENON

-
Image
-by Unnati Sahni (FY, MSc. Applied Psychology) Have you ever found yourself stepping into a situation where you didn’t feel ready, telling yourself, "I'll act like I belong here?” Maybe it was speaking up in a meeting giving a presentation, or even asking someone out. That’s the essence of “fake it till you make it.” At its heart, this concept isn’t about being deceptive—it’s about leveraging the mind-body connection to grow into the person you want to be. From a psychological point of view, this is effective because the human brain is amazingly adaptable. One theoretical framework that supports this notion is the self-perception theory, which argues that people often come to know their emotions through their behaviors. For instance, when a person smiles, even when in pain, the brain interprets the smile and starts to associate it with good feelings. The same principle applies to confidence—when you act confident, your brain interprets your actions as evidence that you are con...
Read more

Virtual Reality Therapy: The Future of Mental Health Treatment

-
Image
“Virtual Reality in Therapy” sounds like a bizarre match, doesn’t it? Well as astonishing and new as it sounds, it is surprisingly equally effective in mental health aid. Virtual reality (VR) allows you to experience a life-like existence in a computer-generated environment. The digital environment setting is expressed through a head-mounted display. By setting up a realistic VR environment through this headset, clinicians help patients experience situations that will further help in the diagnosis and treatment of the respective disorder. Virtual Reality Therapy for Treatment of PTSD and Phobia: Let’s begin this topic with a statement of pure experience given by one of the clinical psychologists testing VR effects in therapy: “One thing I have learnt from VR, is that it is straightforward to fool the brain." Is it, really? Well, the use of VR in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) justifies this statement, as it has had a great impact on treatment and the pos...
Read more