how do you stay mentally healthy essay

how do you stay mentally healthy essay

Strategies for Maintaining Mental Health: A Comprehensive Guide

1. Introduction to Mental Health and Its Importance

Maintaining sound mental health is about striking a balance in life, making sound decisions, and being appropriately reactive to conditions and activities that take place around us without feeling overwhelmed. Maintaining a balance in life is crucial to keeping a sound mind and ensuring mental health exists on a continuum, where it’s possible to thrive or survive or experience symptoms of mental illness. It’s essential to be mindful of the ill thoughts that creep from time to time and harboring a negative outlook and stress can exacerbate mental health issues. For example, if an individual is at ease and feels comfortable and secure in their home, friends can be visited without feeling that identity is at stake, and meaningful work enables them to provide for their future, mental health is hardly ever impaired. When obligations are met and structured activity gives structure to the day, mental health is never compromised. Not being stressed is not the same as having sound mental health, even though it might help some people to keep the ailment at bay.

The World Health Organisation or WHO defines mental health as a state of well-being where one realizes their full potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively, and contribute effectively to society. Mental health is a pivotal component of overall well-being, and without sound mental health, humans cannot realize their maximum potential. Maintaining sound mental health is not about merely avoiding mental health issues. It is also about living life to the fullest and being conscious and emotionally present. As people make their way through life, they should not only be able to support family and friends but also be able to make meaningful decisions effectively and tackle life’s various challenges.

2. Factors Affecting Mental Health

Psychological problems that are likely to lead to mental illness are problems that occur during the early years of life and reach elder years, decrease the adaptation capacity to life, decrease the quality of life, and have the potential for psychological trauma. It is essential to shape life experiences in the most accurate way while shaping the development and maturation of people. Life is made up of development and integrity processes that function with continuous adaptation. Happiness, success, misfortune, adversity, loss, and disaster are the fundamental facts that occur in the development and integrity processes. Individuals who are mentally healthy direct life experiences to solve problems, strengthen resistance and psychological assets, and have successful relationships. Individuals who experience problems in adaptation feel satisfaction and happiness, depression, anxiety, and phobic moodiness affect the qualitative state of their lives in a negative way. Adults who have experienced sensitive periods during childhood and puberty, and who have developed constitutions and structures that affect the personality, are prepared for the formation of mental illnesses more easily. Psychological events, events experienced during the stress period, conflictual separation of parents, the conflicts of parents among themselves during the mother and puberty periods, the mother who cannot create healthy communication and relationship with the child, one of the parents is the injury that causes problems to the child, and individual communication or difficulties experienced in social relations have a negative impact on the development and adaptation.

Mental health is affected by genetic, maternal-fetal problems, stress-induced damage such as losses, genetic disorders that induce mental illnesses, psychological problems, early losses, and the adaptation of life experiences that occur after birth. It is known that psychological problems and stressful life experiences cause diseases in individuals who are genetically more likely to have mental disorders. The biological relationship between genetic patterns and genetic disorders in the family and the mental disorders that arise from this relationship is indisputable, such as Down syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, and Ret syndrome. In addition, problems that occur during pregnancy, interaction, and attachment disorders, maternal instinct problems, and the implementation of poor attachment patterns after delivery can be effective in the development of emotional, social, and psychological disorders in the individual throughout life. What needs to be considered here is that the disorders that affect the psychological and emotional state of the mother during pregnancy and after childbirth have a direct effect on the child and the individual.

3. Effective Strategies for Promoting Mental Well-being

Are you looking for ways to change from living to living life with joy? One way to do this is by focusing on maintaining your mental health, achieving harmony with yourself and others thereby promoting both physical and emotional well-being. Nothing is more debilitating than the feeling of sadness and depression that affects us all at some time in our lives. The following strategies have been suggested to boost basic mental health by reducing sadness and depression.

3.1 Physical Exercise and Mental Health 3.2 Memory-Specific Strategies 3.3 Guiding Principles to Motivate Yourself 3.4 Cognition and the Ability to Achieve

There are a few strategies that can be effectively used for promoting mental well-being. These strategies can be applied in various ways within our everyday lives. Even more, this type of preventive approach must complement other strategies. Here are some strategies suggested for promoting mental well-being.

4. Building Resilience and Coping Mechanisms

First, the strategies previously discussed in this chapter under managing mood and specific strategies for dealing with sources of stress in your life may be integrated here. Second, learn how to recognize when your coping strategies are no longer working and when it may be time to shift to some new strategies. Some of the ways your body signals you that old coping styles aren’t working well may include headaches, insomnia, feelings of panic, irritability, feelings of being “disconnected” and/or withdrawing from those around you, and feeling extremely overwhelmed. When people experience negative events as being uncontrollable, they stop trying to cope and give up after a period of trying to deal with a source of stress that has not improved. Try giving primary attention to those stressors where you can best exert control and influence the outcome.

The importance of having a track record of coping successfully with difficult life experiences cannot be overstated. Building resilience is key to coping and developing new skills that can be used for the future. This is why the first steps you need to take in order to help yourself are to refine your existing coping strategies. Coping strategies can either be problem-based or emotion-based. Know yourself and identify your personal coping strategies that have served you well in the past. Personal strengths include: confidence and a realistic sense of your own abilities and constraints; problem-solving abilities; flexibility in adapting to change, and ideas for alternative goals; and an active social support network. Actively being more accepting of situations that you cannot change.

5. Seeking Professional Help and Resources

Consult with someone, either a primary care physician, mental health specialist (psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, etc.), a neuroscientist, a psychiatrist, or someone involved with neuroscience, that is, a licensed clinician who is able to diagnose or treat mental health problems. They should be the professionals who can most accurately diagnose mental illnesses and suggest a course of treatment. Knowing that it’s still difficult for many to go to these professionals alone for the first time, if this is the case, you can speak to your parents or a friend about your problems and ask for them to accompany you on your initial appointment. They could be a great help in making you feel more comfortable. Before your appointment, it would also be great to write and bring a list of all the medications, vitamins, or supplements you’re currently taking. Don’t forget to bring a list of any symptoms you’ve been experiencing and, if possible, something you need to know more about. You can also write down and bring any questions to make the most of your appointment. A questions list could include the following.

Before talking about this part of the strategies, however, it should be mentioned about recognition. Unfortunately, recognizing signs and symptoms of mental illness is a lot more difficult than it may seem at first. When it comes to these illnesses, people often ask for direct evidence, especially because they’re going to be investing money in it. In real life, these symptoms can be very subtle, and sometimes they seem to be symptoms of other things. It’s true that you can’t simply think that you’re sick as soon as you start noticing those symptoms, but you can opt for an evaluation if they’ve been going on for weeks or months and are affecting your life in a negative way. There are a few ways you can get help, as follows.