What is Mental Health Anyways?
According to www.psychiatry.org, “Mental health is the foundation for emotions, thinking, communication, learning, resilience, hope and self-esteem. Mental health is also key to relationships, personal and emotional well-being and contributing to community or society. Mental health is a component of overall well-being. It can influence and be influenced by physical health.
Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses can be associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities.” You can read the full article here.
Some of the most well known mental issnesses are Depression, Anxiety, Post Tramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Bipolar and Schizophrenia. However, there are many more disorders that are not usually thought of as mental illnesses - Additction/Substance Use Disorder, Alzheimer’s Disease, Eating Disorders, ADD/ADHD and Pregnancy And Postpartum Disorders to name a few.
Some of the mental illnesses already listed break down into different categories. For example, Anxiety can be diagnosed as Social Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Phobias, Panic Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and PTSD. You can find a more complete list here.
Personally, I can only speak in terms of depression and there is definitely a difference between depression and sadness. Kevin Breel described it best in his TedTalk Confessions of a depressed comic.
Kevin Breel didn't look like a depressed kid: team captain, at every party, funny and confident. But he tells the story of the night he realized that -- to save his own life -- he needed to say four simple words.
One of the biggest problems that surrounds mental illnesses is that becasue they can’t be seen like a physical injury can be, many people don’t believe there’s a problem. I’ve been told to “suck it up” and called a whiner and crybaby in the middle of a major depressive cycle, but have been offered more help than I knew what to do with when I sprained my ankle. Because it can’t be seen, it’s all the more crucial to take mental illness seriously and either get help or help those with it. We are only beginning to realize that good mental health is critical to our well being.
