Mental Health Monday: Let us talk about Mental Health

What is ‘mental health’? What is ‘mental illness’?

We understand physiological illness—signs from our bodies that signal us when we’re physically unwell. Once we identify these signs, we either decide whether we can manage our illness by ourselves or we decide to seek help from a medical professional, such as our family doctor. However, what happens when these signs are not physical?

What do we do when these feelings of ill-health are mental or emotional or both? We see the signs, we feel the signs, and the people around us often notice the signs, but what do we do once we have figured out that something is wrong? Therein lies the definitions of ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’, and let us not forget our general psychological well-being which we may consider as the constant between these two poles on the spectrum of our minds.

First, let us define what ‘mental health’ is: Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well-being. It is a state of well-being in which we are aware of our own feelings and we understand our feelings. It affects how we think, feel and act; in other words, how we’re able to cope with our lives, how we handle stress, how we relate to others, our thought processes during decision-making and the choices we then
make. Flip this definition over and you begin to understand what mental illness is. If we delve deeper, we will find a myriad of mental disorders that affect mood, thinking and behaviour—these are what we call “clinical, or psychological and psychiatric disorders”.

According to definition, mental illness is any medical condition that is marked by causing sufficient disorganisation of one’s personality, mind, or emotions and that then impairs normal psychological functioning and causes marked distress or disability, or disruption in normal daily functioning, The misconception and stigma around mental health and psychology has caused many of us to overlook the signs of mental illness or psychological disturbances and this has often led some of us down a path of self-destruction, a loss of empathy, and often outward-destruction. We hesitate to seek help when our emotions are in disarray, or when we first feel and see the signs of mental disorder; we hesitate to seek psychological help for loved ones who are displaying signs of psychological and/or mental illness hoping that we can somehow quell the symptoms by pretending that they don’t exist.

There are a few exercises which we can practice and maintain in order to keep our mental health in check (please remember that this is not a cure or comprehensive therapy for mental or psychological illness, but a guideline for healthy living):
-Maintain healthy social connections
-Maintain physical and outdoor activity
-Identify and find healthy ways to cope with stress
-Eat healthy: Your body, your brain and your mind are your tools, so treat them like
temples
-Get 6 to 8 hours of quality sleep a day
-Find your meaning and purpose, and enjoy your journey
-Acceptance: Accept yourself and your life in order to work through your difficulties
-Breathe, breathe, breathe
Mental health is important: our physical and mental health work on a continuum—you
cannot have one without maintaining the other. Break the chains and end the stigma.
Seek help.

“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, more unashamed
conversation.”
-Glenn Close

If you have any questions relating to mental health or are seeking professional advice, please forward your question or query to byronp@dbn.caxton.co.za. These will be forwarded to Sheena who will then address your issue in her next article.

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