Why Mental Health Should Be Taken Seriously?

“Health is Wealth”. We’ve heard this little phrase countless times since our childhood. But have we really taken the time to let it infiltrate our minds? And more importantly, have we really given it as much significance as we’ve given to wealth? People go to their offices in pursuit of their monthly paycheck, but often forget to take care of their health. Some people take care of their physical health, but only a few pay heed to their mental health. 

Understanding Mental Health

Since its commencement, WHO has included mental welfare in the meaning of health. WHO broadly characterizes health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not only the lack of infection or illness. Apart from this, health can have several definitions. Distinctions in values across nations, societies, classes, and sexual orientations can sometimes make it difficult to settle on a single definition. Hence, mental wellness can be conceptualized without limiting its understanding across societies. WHO has lately suggested that mental wellness is a state of well-being in which a person understands their own abilities, can adapt to the ordinary stress of life, can work productively, and can contribute to his or her community. In this sense, mental health is the bedrock of well-being and efficient functioning for a person and for a community. It is more than the shortfall of mental illness.

Neither mental nor physical well-being can exist alone. Mental, physical, and social functioning are all correlated. Besides this, well-being and sickness may exist together. Both of them are actually unrelated, provided that well-being is characterized as the absence of illness. Identifying health as a state of balance, including oneself, others, and the environment, helps people comprehend how to improve it.

Mental well-being encompasses emotional well-being, self-awareness, cognitive health, and self-realization of one’s intellectual potential and passion. Mental wellness may also be defined as the person’s ability to appreciate life and to create harmony between routine activities and endeavors to accomplish mental versatility. A few early signs connected with mental health issues are trouble falling asleep, decreased energy, and even suicidal thoughts.

Importance of Mental Health

Similarly, as physical wellness helps your body remain strong, mental wellness helps you with accomplishing and supporting a condition of good psychological and emotional well-being. When you are emotionally strong, you can conduct activities at peak performance. You can be creative, try new things, and face challenges with ease. You become more than ready to face tough times in your own and loved ones’ lives. Yet sometimes, you can feel the gloom that can accompany the demise of a close friend or family member, an employment misfortune, relationship issues, or other uncertain occasions. But despite all this, you can still bounce back and move on with your routine life. It may not be as easy as it sounds, but it’s certainly not an impossible feat.

Building good mental health can also help you battle the emotional well-being issues that, in some cases, are related to ongoing chronic ailments. Sometimes, it can alleviate the effects of a physical or mental sickness. Coping with anxiety well, for example, can positively affect chronic illness.

Negligence of mental health can give rise to an increased risk of depression, regular mood swings, brain fog, sleep deprivation, lowered self-esteem, and various other problems. Your personal, as well as professional life, can also experience many challenges if your mental health isn’t in the optimum state.

Whereas, if you take care of your mental health, you’ll have high productivity, clarity in thinking, better sleep, high energy levels, high self-worth, enhanced ability to cope with challenges, and many more benefits. 

4 Proven Hacks To Improve Mental Health

Evaluating your emotional well-being routinely is a great practice. Committing even a short time frame consistently to your mental fitness will produce phenomenal results, as you’ll feel refreshed and recharged.

Here are a few effective ways of improving mental fitness:

Practice Gratitude: Gratitude is a thankful admiration for what someone receives, whether concrete or non-concrete. Gratitude makes an individual recognize the goodness in his or her life. It helps the person connect to something bigger – whether it be the environment, the universe, or a higher power. When you are thankful, your soul drains out all the negative emotions, leaving you in an optimistic frame of mind. A positive mind makes you look at the world through a positive lens. As a result, all negative emotions, such as guilt, fear, hatred, and almost every other equivalent emotion are reduced or even eliminated. This further has a domino effect on all aspects of your life. Relationships, physical health, mental health, work performance, and a variety of other factors all improve significantly.

Workout: Working out boosts your physical health, but it also works wonders in terms of keeping you mentally fit. Exercise makes your body release feel-good hormones, i.e. endorphin and serotonin. If you’re not a big fan of working out, you can opt for other outdoor activities like jogging, cycling, swimming, playing sports, or anything that involves real physical movement. Working out diverts your mind from stress and other negative thoughts that might pop up eventually. Physical exercises have also been proven to improve concentration and focus.

Get Ample Sleep: It’s no mystery that sleep plays a significant part in good physical and mental wellness. Lack of sleep can leave you feeling lethargic and depleted temporarily, but it can also have crucial repercussions in the long haul. The absence of sleep is associated with various negative health consequences, including cardiovascular illness, type 2 diabetes, and depression. REM sleep is the best sleep you can have and helps in the proper functioning of the brain’s processes. During sleep, the mind tries to assess and recall contemplations and thoughts. Sleep deprivation is probably destructive to positive and good emotional well-being. This can impact the state of mind and the stimulus that is linked to mental wellness issues, including the peril of suicidal thoughts.

Don’t Procrastinate: Have you ever successfully finished the task that you had decided on at the beginning of the day? It’s a great feeling, right? But what if you’re unable to complete the task? Everything feels irritating, and you start to lose motivation. Most of the time, we tend to procrastinate and push things to “tomorrow or next time,” whereas completing predefined tasks can help a person gain confidence. It’s often seen that when people don’t complete their tasks, personal or professional, they tend to be more frustrated and stressed than otherwise. Procrastination guilt may translate into severe anxiety and even depression in the long run. Hence, it’s advisable to jot down a few important tasks on a daily basis and focus on their completion.

Mental health is as important as physical health and shouldn’t be neglected. Negligence of mental health can have severe detrimental effects on your overall health. But on the flip side, robust mental health can give you a stellar edge in your personal as well as professional life. Follow the above-mentioned hacks for better health and share this blog with someone who can benefit from it.