WHAT IS MENTAL HEALTH

 

      

    “THE ONLY JOURNEY IS

     THE JOURNEY WITHIN”

 

           

 MENTAL HEALTH

Mental Health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, related to others, and make choices. It is important in every stage of life from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. Mental health affects daily living, relationships and physical health. Mental health is a state of well being in which individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.

       

    5 components of mental health are

ü  Ability to enjoy life

ü  Resilience

ü  Balance

ü  Self Actualization

ü  Flexibility

STIGMA

Stigma is when someone sees you in a negative way because of your mental illness.

Discrimination is when someone treats you in a negative way because of your medical illness.

Social stigma and discrimination can make mental health problems worse and stop the person from getting help they need.

Listen to the person.

Empathize with that person.

लोग क्या कहेगे…forget what people say. Listen to what is right.

Repetitive thoughts – how to come out?

ü  Share your thoughts to your closed ones

ü  Take professional help because they wont judge you

ü  Stay busy

ü  Drink water- 1L /20 kgs

ü  Eat Bananas

ü  Exercise , walk , dance

ü  Do something to elevate your mood. Occupy yourself with something.

ü  Don’t use too much of your mobile phones

ü  Smile more often

ü  Slow deep breathing always helps

ü  Live in gratitude

ü  There is no stigma – talk with someone.

 

MENTAL HEALTH ILLNESS

 

Mental health illness is also called mental disorders. A person gets irritated, and disturbed and always aggressive.  His behavior or emotions have changes. He cannot make his own choices and decisions. When you cannot deal with challenges, deal with stressors. That is the time you need to consult your psychiatrist. Mental illness is associated with distress or problems functioning in social, work or family activities. Mental illness is something one should not be ashamed of. It is like any other disease like diabetes or heart problem. It is treatable and one should talk about it.

 

IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION

Communication has a key role in mental health recovery. You might have heard from many social media expertise or webinars talking to talk about it and speak out what is inside you. What people do is they hide their insecurities and feelings instead of fighting with them. They keep it within themselves and keep on collecting things and keep it in their mind which at the end gets overloaded with lots of negativity and insecurities that  lead to problems arising in the form of extreme behavior changes and cutting themselves  out from the society. A person starts living in isolation and avoids communication in search of peace but unfortunately it gets worse and is of no help to the patient. This leads to irritability, loneliness, aggression or crying. A person won’t stop thinking about the past or about the things which he started hiding from himself.

As a therapist the key role of a therapy is communication with a client. A therapist starts building a friendly relationship with the client so that he starts trusting the therapist and speak his heart out. It is the work of the therapist to see that the client won’t resist in speaking to her and talk to her like a true friend.

 

WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT – PHYSICAL/ MENTAL HEALTH?

 

In terms of health both are equally important. But why doctors ask you to consult a counselor when you have any physical health issue? Why is it that you feel so insecure and full of fear before your surgery of any of your body parts or why is it that during your treatment of cancer you are referred to consult counselor by your oncologist or radiologist. It is because when you are going through any of these issues to deal with your health patients mind is not prepared with the strong treatment he is going through. He starts feeling hopeless and helpless. His mind just thinks about all the negative outcomes coming his way. The role of a therapist or a counselor is to empathize with the patient and bring positivity and hope to deal with his treatment. When you are positively strong with your treatment it works as a medicine to you. The patient responds with the treatment very well and there are more chances for him to get well and healthy. The willingness to live makes the patient respond to the treatment. This is very important and this is what a counselor’s role is to make him fight with the disease through her therapies.

When a person is mentally strong he can fight with any difficulties in his life whether it is physical or psychological.

 

CORONAVIRUS SURVIVING THE LOOMING HEALTH CRISES

During lockdown days we witnessed so many problems taking place in people’s lives. Social isolation, lack of exercise, financial uncertainty will almost certainly lead to deteriorating mental health around the world. But you can take steps to soften the blow.

ü  From today until this is over, you have a new god and his name is ‘ROUTINE’.

ü  Build and repair relationships; you have no excuse now.

ü  Focus on the basics of health and wellness.

ü  Remember you are not alone.

 

REHABILITATION OF THE MENTALLY ILL

Rehabilitation of the mentally ill is necessary to improve their quality of life once their active symptoms are reduced.

 

The aim of rehabilitation is to empower the patient to become a productive member of society to the extent possible. In rehabilitation the patients are given occupational therapy, social skills training, and vocational therapy. In occupational therapy, the patients are taught skills training such as candle making, paper bag making and weaving to help them to form a work discipline. Social skills training help the patient to develop interpersonal skills through role play imitation and instruction. The objective is to teach the patient to function in a social group. Cognitive retraining is given to improve the basic cognitive functions. After the patients improve sufficiently, vocational training is given wherein the patient is helped to gain skills necessary to undertake productive employment.

DECISION MAKING OR CONFLICT IN MAKING CHOICES

Life is all about making choices. We fear to choose the wrong path and end up regretting our decisions. Our life is dependent on what choices we make. We always fear of uncertain things coming our way.

“You can’t make decision based on fear and the possibility of what might happen”

We should know how to fight and learn from our failure. We do take the wrong decisions in life but with each mistake we learn. Failures make you confident and lead you to success. We always discuss our problems and matters with our elders because they are the ones who guide us – because of their experiences in life.

 We started our journey of life when our parents, took the decision to give birth to us. A child’s decision is taken by his parents till he is capable of taking his own. For e.g.  from the small choices of what to eat, what to wear, and what subjects to study to some important ones like making career choices. The dilemma of selecting subjects , choosing the college , career making and starting with job. With all these choices there is a big responsibility which automatically brings the emotion of fear in our heart and mind.

 Decision making is deciding on one out of several possible courses of action. The drift of decision making towards polarization is a serious problem – one that can interfere with the ability to make sound decisions. Decision making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a brief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It is the process of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values, preferences and beliefs of decision maker.

When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him into the places he had never dreamed of when he first made a decision.

 Even in sports making good decisions can be the difference for you, understand how you make decisions, break it down, and improve in each area. This is the sequence of events when a football player receives the ball -

                    RECEIVE – LOOK – DECIDE – PLAY

In decision making, we sometimes choose among options based on choices of personal significance. In decision making we already know the various solutions and choices and one has to be selective. Suppose you are a very good player of badminton and getting an opportunity to play at the state level. At the same time the final exam is approaching and you need to study hard for it. You will have to choose between two options, practicing for badminton or studying for the final examination. In this situation your decision will be based upon evaluation of all possible outcomes. People differ in their priorities and therefore their decisions will differ. In real life situation we take quick decisions and therefore, it is not possible always to evaluate every situation thoroughly and exhaustively.

 From a psychological viewpoint, in considering the decisions, we must remember that different people assign different utilities to the same event; the psychological worth of the outcome varies among people. E.g. given a choice between receiving $10 now or $100, but a poor person would probably take the immediate $10. The utility of the $10 is different for the two people. In making complex ‘real life’ decisions we do not know the precise likelihoods of various outcomes; we can only make our own estimates of the probabilities. People make decisions that will maximize subjectively expanded utility. We tend to give too much credit to people we perceive to have social status known as ‘the Halo Effect’. It’s our tendency to assume that physical attractive people are smarter or nicer than they actually are. That successful people are more interesting than they actually are. That powerful people are funnier or more charismatic than they actually are.

We all have multiple paths before us. The key is in making decisions. You may not always make the right one. But, it will be your own. Choose wisely. Determine your own path. While nothing in life is risk free, some paths have clearer roadmaps than others. Craving a new path tends to involve a lot of trial and error, which can also mean greater potential for failure. But experiencing failure more often can help us change our relationships to view it as a learning opportunity rather than a verdict on our ability. The growth mindset can, in turn, make success more likely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SELF CARE

Self care is an activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental emotional and physical heath. Although it’s a simple concept in theory, it’s something we very often overlook. Good self care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety. It is important to taking care your own self selfishly and unapologetically. Lets be honest. We are not good at taking care of ourselves.

 

We feel that indulging in short term pleasures is the key to self care. Self care goes deeper than that. Emotionally, we are in a state of fluctuations between denial, ignorance, optimistic biases, and occasional worries to overwhelming state of panic.

Self care is an effort of putting ourselves – our mind and our body. It varies from person to person.

ü It could be as simple as moisturizing our hands and feet before bedtime, drinking enough water.

ü Self care does not require you to take out a huge chunk of time from your busy day.

ü Taking breaks from stressful work and relaxing the mind once in a while.

ü If someone often experiences internal self criticism it could be as simple as forgiving oneself and practicing self compassion.

ü Take time off to relax and enjoy. When you make time for yourself and sufficient rest and exercise, you feel more energetic and will be able to do more – for yourself as well as for those around you.

ü If someone worries excessively about past and future (which most of us may be doing) it could be something like practicing being mindful of the present moment and appreciating it, and consciously detaching ourselves from one’s thoughts.

ü If someone excessively health conscious it may even be enjoying that one cheat meal.