Introduction
Everyone knows that mental health is important, but what is mental health is a question people are still debating. The WHO(World Health Organization) has one definition, and the American CDC(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has another. But one thing they all agree on is that problems with mental health are a serious issue all over the world, and it is very important to improve mental health.
In India alone, there are close to 200 million people suffering from some mental health issue, that is, one in seven. So what is mental health, and what can be done to improve mental health? That is what I am going to share in this article.
What is Mental Health
I will try to explain it in simple language. Health has two aspects. Number one is functionality. Are you able to function in the way that you think you should? Are you able to do everything that you want to do? If yes, your functionality is okay.
The other aspect is adaptability. When something changes in your environment or something happens to you, are you able to adapt yourself and move on with your life? Or does that change stop you or push you back? If you’re able to move on and keep growing, then you are adaptable. And that is also a sign of Health.
Now, two important points to mention here are that adaptability and functionality are different for different people. For example, what is ideal functionality for a top athlete may not be the same for a chess grandmaster, and it’ll be very different for a top actor.
Different people expect different things from their bodies and minds, so ideal functionality will be different. The other thing is that everyone has an upper limit of adaptability, which means we can all tolerate some amount of stress, but how much stress? is dependent on each one of us, and after a certain amount of stress, everyone will break.
Let me give you a silly example of a chair. So if I sit on a chair, the chair is fine. We shall say the chair is healthy. But what if I sit on the chair and two more friends also climb on the chair? Now, whether the chair will break is a sign of how healthy or how strong that chair is.
But imagine if an elephant comes and sits on the chair, it will break because that chair was not designed to take the stress off an elephant. In other words, if I had planned to put an elephant on that chair, I would have worked on it before. I should have reinforced it with steel and titanium. I should have run some tests to check if the chair could bear that weight.
Health is exactly similar. Mental health is not absolute, which means no one is 100% unbreakable, but the point is, how do you get more healthy, more resilient, and more adaptable to a changing environment? Now that we understand health from the perspective of functionality and adaptability Let’s talk about levels of Health.
Levels of Health-
Now, imagine life is going on, and something happens. There is an obstacle in front of you. Now, four things can happen, and I describe these four things as Minus 1, Zero, Plus 1, and Beyond.
Level Minus 1 is when the obstacle not only stops you but pushes you back. Level zero is when the obstacle stops you, but you remain where you are. Level Plus 1 is when you are able to maneuver your way and continue living your life even if the obstacle is there. And Beyond is when you are able to use that obstacle to gain even more speed.
This is how I think about levels of adaptability when it comes to health. How you react to that obstacle is a sign of how healthy you are.
If you’ve seen the movie Kung Fu Panda, I think “PO” is a great example. At the start of the movie, he considers his tummy as an obstacle, slowing down and even stopping because of how fat he is. As the movie continues, he adapts to it, and he’s able to do all his Kung Fu exercises despite his tummy. By the end of the movie, he actually uses his tummy to his advantage.
Similarly, his opponent, Tai Lung, uses a feather to escape from his unbreakable prison. These are great examples of how resilience can help you use obstacles to get ahead in life, and for me that is a sign of mental health.
These levels of Health apply not only to mental but also to physical health. Because how strong your bone is will decide if your bone will fracture if you have a fall .but at the same time if you go to the gym and work out your bones will be so strong that maybe a fall that could have broken somebody else’s bone might not break yours.
So this is important to understand now that we’ve understood what is health and what are the levels of Health. Let’s talk about how to improve your mental health.
How to improve Mental health –
Let’s dive right into how to improve mental health.
Step One: Is there a problem?
Is there a problem? Now, this is a question asked which: is how do I know if there is an issue with my mental health? The way to tackle this is by asking how you know if you have a physical problem.
For example, how do you know if you have a knee issue? Well, you’d say I’ll have pain in my knee, exactly. If you have something that you are aware of, you are able to deal with it much better. After that, you can decide how serious it is.
For example, if you have knee pain only when you lift something heavy, then you have a knee issue. but what if you have knee pain even if you climb the stairs, Then you have a more serious knee problem,and what if you have knee pain even if you’re just sitting or lying down? That means you have a very serious knee problem.
Similarly, when it comes to mental health, there is something that you want to do, but you’re unable to do because of some reason, and that is awareness of the problem. We don’t know what the issue is, and we don’t understand why it is an issue, but just awareness is step one, and very often, this is enough to seek help.
Suppose you are at step one and don’t know how to proceed. You should speak to a therapist or a psychiatrist and let them take you through the remaining steps.
Step Two: Understanding what is the problem?
The second step is to understand what the problem is. Now, how do you go about this? See, the tricky thing about mental health when compared to physical health is that, when it comes to mental health issues, we have a tendency to deny things or lie to ourselves. We don’t like to accept that something is wrong because it almost feels “personal”.
It almost feels like you’re saying that there’s “something wrong with you”, as opposed to saying that if there’s knee pain, you’re able to say your knee is hurting. It’s not me. That is the problem with mental health issues, and that’s why people take so long to admit that they are struggling. That’s also why people struggle to understand the issue.
And one of the ways of getting past this problem is by writing. Journaling or writing down your thoughts allows you to explore your own State of Mind better, and you gradually gain a deeper understanding of what it is, that is bothering you so much.
Now remember that the earlier you spot a problem and start understanding it. The easier it is to solve. Coming back to the knee pain example, suppose you’ve just started having knee pain, and you’ve immediately spotted it. If you go to a doctor, they’ll be able to treat you much better.
But suppose your knee has been hurting for a few months now, and it has gradually started getting swollen and red, and you’re unable to walk, so you go to the doctor. Then, isn’t it much more difficult to treat it?
It’s very similar to mental health. If you spot the problem early and if you’re able to find out what the issue is early on, it is a much easier problem to solve.
Step 3: Why is there a problem? The reason behind the problem-
Step number three is to understand why there is a problem and what has led to this situation. And usually, the answer is always in the past. Like physical problems, mental issues don’t come out of nowhere. There’s always something that has led to this, and the answer answers might lie maybe in your childhood, maybe in your teenagers, maybe some experiences you’ve had in the past few years of your life.
All of these things added up to certain behavior patterns and thought patterns that you have, which has led to this situation today. Understanding this chain of causality is important if you want to fix it.
In Physical Medicine, it is called Etiology and Risk factors. For example, if somebody has a heart attack today, it means that over the last few years, some things have happened in their heart, in their blood vessels, that have led to this event.
Similarly, in mental health, it is important to catch the early signs so that we can take the necessary steps at the right time. Here again, both journaling honestly and speaking to a therapist will help you go through this process much better and improve mental health.
Solution: How to fix it?
Finally comes the solution part. Now that We’ve understood that there is a problem, what is the problem, and why did this problem happen? We have to fix it; usually, the solution is in the form of having”difficult conversations”.
Mostly with yourself but also with people that you love now. Why are these conversations difficult? These conversations will be about things that you have done to hurt them, or they have done to hurt you, or mostly things that you have done to hurt yourself.
And this, again, is where a therapist really helps because they help you navigate these conversations in a safe way. so that you don’t spiral out of control or you don’t feel helpless in the middle of it.
Now, no conversation on Mental Health can be complete without talking about the importance of physical health. Remember that your mind does not exist in a vacuum. The health of your mind is directly related to how healthy your brain is.
Everything affects the health of your brain: what you eat, how much deep sleep you get, how much you exercise, and what environment you are living in. All these factors directly affect the health of your brain, which in turn translates to your mental health.
Finally, we have to talk about “Medications”. There are several medications for anxiety and depression, and these have been life-saving. Millions of people around the world have benefited from taking these medications, and if your therapist or your psychiatrist decides that medications are the right approach for you, trust them.
Medications are there to help you get better, but remember that medications are not the cure for everything. They are only a support system, and they are not a substitute for you taking care of your sleep, taking care of your body, and working on yourself by journaling and having those difficult conversations.
Medicines help you do all these things better so that you can improve. There was a study that was published in the British medical journal(BMJ) very recently, which showed how exercise forms like yoga, dance, and even resistance training, and weightlifting are all As effective as medications when it comes to treating things like depression and combining medications with these exercise forms can be so much more effective.
So remember that improving your mental health is a multifaceted strategy. There are many things you have to do, but when it all comes together, your journey becomes so much easier.
