Mental Health Conscious

Your mental health has a major effect on your personal relationships. It is astounding how many people are unaware of how deeply their relationships will be affected by their mental health. It is common to think of personal mental health as something that only affects the self, but the truth is, everyone in a relationship with that person will also be affected by their mental health. This is another reason why it is so essential to work at personal mental health. If you are not interested in doing it for yourself, you should be interested in doing it for your loved ones.

Your spouse or significant other, whom you live with, will feel the effects of your mental health problems most severely. Our serious adult relationships are the ones we tend to commit the most time and energy to, and if we do not bring good mental health into our relationships, they suffer. It would be impossible for your significant other to emerge totally unscathed from time immersed in your mental health problems. People naturally adopt some of the thought patterns of those they are close to, and if your thoughts and behaviors are negative, they will leave a negative impression on those you care about.

Parents, siblings and close family members will also feel the effects of your mental health problems. Family occasions will be impacted, interactions will be strained and bonds will become burdened. Families often share mental health problems or have a collection of inter-related mental health problems, so it could be that your family is already in the midst of personal dysfunction.

Even your friends and acquaintances will be impacted by your mental health problems. Anyone who spends time with you will struggle because of your mental health problems. They will struggle to understand your thinking and your behaviors, and may begin to question or blame themselves. You should never blame yourself for your mental health problems. They form in ways that are out of your control. However, as a mature person, you must take responsibility for your mental health problems and take the initiative to work on them so that you can benefit yourself and your relationships.

Despite the profound importance of mental health to our well-being, many people put little thought into it or regard it as a non-reality. Mental health is an invisible life force, and many people do not see the value in focusing on something that they do not experience with their five senses. They do not think that their mental health really has that much effect on their lives. This is common of people who are in good mental health and never had much of a reason to analyze it, or they have just enough mental health to function and otherwise not question their thought and behavioral patterns. The fact of the matter is, everyone has room to improve their mental health. In fact, having a constant goal of improving on one’s mental health is a sign of pinnacle mental health. Everyone needs to be aware that their basic quality of life hinges on the state of their mental health.

One badly needs good mental health for coping with hard times, for example. Hard times strike everyone in the form of unfortunate life circumstances or damaged relationships. Difficult life events are burdensome on everyone and have the potential to do permanent damage to a person. However, if a person has strong mental health, they will be able to overcome difficult life circumstances and rise above them. One could think of optimal mental health as the ability to receive all hardship as a learning opportunity and a chance to grow. Mentally healthy people do not become trapped by hardship, but rather implement the lessons learned through hardship to their lives and become stronger.

Mental health is also an essential for maintaining balance and appreciating the good things in life. When life circumstances are neither good nor bad, simply neutral, an unhealthy mind will slip into negative thought patterns and interpret the circumstances as bad. Similarly, when life circumstances are positive, a mentally unhealthy person will still be unable to respond to them appropriately. If they experience joy, it will be manic or short lived, then will give way to negative thoughts and behaviors once again. It is essential that people with poor mental health strive to achieve good mental health for their own well-being as well as that of the people close to them.

If you or someone you care about is struggling with mental health issues, seek professional treatment for a better quality of life. Mental health professionals can offer you anxiety and depression help, anger and stress management, plus a range of other treatment options. Do not suffer alone. Reach out for help today!

Mental health is something we all depend on in order to function and make decisions and go about our days. Yet the average person can hardly describe their own mental health profile in anywhere near as much detail as their physical health profile. This is an odd phenomenon in our culture that we do not treat mental health like something that actually exists. The average person thinks they are mentally healthy, or if they are not, it is likely that they are undiagnosed in their mental unhealthiness. Do you know how mentally healthy you are, personally?

The first step in taking charge of your own mental health is by becoming aware of it. Examine your own thought and behavioral patterns. What do you see? Do you engage in positive self talk? Are you honest? Do you have healthy, fulfilling relationships with other people? Are you a functional adult? These among an array of other personal questions will start to get you in touch with how you think. Evaluating how you think cannot be underestimated in importance. No two people think exactly alike, but people’s brains work in similar ways, and there are certainly ways of telling which thought processes are healthy and which are not.

The second step in taking charge of your own mental health is by assessing what it needs in order to improve. This is not a guessing game. This is a psychological examination of the health of your personal thoughts and behaviors. Are there areas that need improvement? Are there areas in your life that are given to negative thoughts, anger, resentment, frustration, disappointment and sadness? Do you feel out of control of certain areas of your life? Have you always had a suspicion that you do not have some of the basic coping mechanisms and healthy patterns that seem to come naturally to others?

A person’s mental health is something that they cannot afford to be ignorant of. The life of our mental health is just as important as the life of our physical health. There are medical instruments and lab tests available to calculate the level of our physical health, but there is only the strength of our communication and the readability of our behaviors available to determine the level of our mental health, which make it a much trickier thing to accurately assess. Mental health is largely undermined in importance when compared to physical health which makes no sense considering how heavily we depend on our mental health.

Some people treat mental health awareness with the respect it deserves. They are conscious of their own mental health and of the mental health of those around them who affect them. They put thought into the health of their relationships, spirituality, purpose and physical health, and are aware of what their lifestyle should look like in order to achieve personal balance. They are familiar with mental health terminology and can speak of their inner lives in terms of self-care, coping abilities, personal strengths and weaknesses, relational abilities and personal mental health profiles. These people are a benefit to society because they have taken the initiative to be aware of and care for their own mental health, thus taking the strain off other people to manage their mental health.

There are others who are oblivious to their mental health and have never given it a passing thought. Some people actually believe that psychology is a pseudoscience and there is nothing to understand about the life and health of the mind. These people believe that whatever behavior or emotion strikes them is fair game because there is nothing to understand about mental health. These people would benefit society greatly if they were to change their thinking and take responsibility for their own mental health. It is people like this who bring damage to interpersonal relationships and unhealthiness to collective thought. We need to impress upon everyone that mental health awareness and personal care are as optional as physical health awareness and personal care so that we can begin to speak the same language about how we are feeling.