HEALTH TIPS: Staying Mentally Healthy

Mental health refers to our cognitive, and/or emotional well being - it is all about how we think, feel and behave. Mental health also includes a person's ability to enjoy life - to attain a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience. Your mental health can affect your daily life, relationships and even your physical health.

Mental health is "emotional, behavioural, and social maturity or normality; the absence of a mental or behavioural disorder; a state of psychological well-being in which one has achieved a satisfactory integration of one's instinctual drives acceptable to both oneself and one's social milieu; an appropriate balance of love, work, and leisure pursuits". -Medilexicon

Mentally healthy individuals tend to have better medical health, productivity, and social relationships. There is no one test that definitively indicates whether someone is mentally unhealthy until there is a deviation from normal cognitive and emotional indicators. Therefore, health-care practitioners diagnose a mental disorder by gathering comprehensive medical, family, and mental-health information.

Mental illness refers to all of the diagnosable mental disorders and is characterized by abnormalities in thinking, feelings, or behaviours. There is no single cause for mental illness. Rather, it is the result of a complex group of genetic, psychological, and environmental factors.

Experts say we all have the potential for suffering from mental illness, no matter how old we are, whether we are male or female, rich or poor, or ethnic group we belong to. In the UK over one quarter of a million people are admitted into psychiatric hospitals each year, and more than 4,000 people kill themselves. They come from all walks of life.


WHAT CAN WE DO TO SAVE GUARD OUR MENTAL HEALTH?

Healthier LifeStyle: having a healthier lifestyle, which may include a better diet, lower alcohol and illegal drug consumption, getting enough sleep can make enormous differences to mental health.

Sticking to a WorkOut Routine: Exercise can boost an exercise-related gene in the brain that works as a powerful anti-depressant. Exercise may help people with depression by enhancing body image, providing social support from exercise groups, a distraction for every day worries, heightened self-confidence from meeting a goal, and altered circulation of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, and the endorphins. Even a very small amount of additional exercise has been seen to have an important impact on mental health.
Talking to a Professional: If you start experiencing anxiety on a regular basis you might need to seek medical help. Talk to a therapist or counsellor.

Source: MedicalNewsToday, MedicineNet