What is good mental health?
Much talk about mental health focuses on mental illness. But there is more to mental well-being than simply being without mental illness.
Think about mental health and a list of mental illnesses often comes to mind – there are depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addiction, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, to name a few.
Efforts to raise awareness of mental illness mean that most of us are now somewhat familiar with the most common mental disorders, even if we had no personal experience at all.
But in recent years, researchers and doctors have moved away from viewing mental health in terms of the presence or absence of symptoms. Instead, they sought to discover what it means to be in good mental health, and what we can do to advance our mental well-being.
According to Tim Sharp, founder and chief happiness officer at The Happiness Institute, the turnaround was significant. Instead of spending most of his time preventing people from being at their worst, he now devotes much of his working life to ensuring that people are at their best.
What is good mental health?
Psychologist Martin Seligman has raised positive psychology over the past two decades.
Seligman’s idea of good mental health is summed up in five main areas that together make up the acronym PERMA: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, purpose, and accomplishments. However, other researchers believe that additional factors also play a role.
Felicia Hubert, director of the Welling Institute at Cambridge University and professor of psychology at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University, has taught mental health for more than two decades. It describes mental health as a spectrum.
“On one side, there are common mental disorders [of anxiety and depression] and at the other end, positive mental health is, or it thrives,” she says.
To define the meaning of prosperity, Hubert explained that positive mental health features will be the opposite of those that define poor mental health. Looking at the internationally agreed measures of depression and anxiety and setting the opposite of all of their symptoms, Hubert distilled a list of 10 features of positive rest.
This list includes the five PERMA features, as well as emotional stability, optimism, flexibility, self-esteem and vitality.
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What determines positive mental health?
The following traits were found to be important for good mental health
- Positive emotions: All things considered, how happy I am?
- Participation: taking care of your business and activities
- Relationships: Having people in your life who care about them and who care about you
- Meaning and purpose: the feeling that what you do in life has value and value
- Achievement: The feeling that what you are doing gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes you feel competent
- Emotional stability: a feeling of calm and peace
- Optimism: the positive feeling of your life and future
- Flexibility: the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity
- Self-esteem: a positive feeling about yourself
- Vitality: a feeling of vitality
Why is good mental health important?
Regardless of the definitions, evidence indicates that a sound mental state is something that must be pursued.
“We know that when you have a high level of luxury, all sorts of other things go along with those really cool things, like better learning, better relationships, increased productivity, and better health,” says Hubert.
Although positive mental traits and symptoms of a common mental illness are located on the opposite ends of the mental health spectrum, they are not just different aspects of the same coin. Having good mental health is not the same without bad mental health.
This is perhaps best illustrated by other studies at Huppert. In the study, more than 6000 people living in the UK completed surveys on their general health and whether or not they were experiencing psychological symptoms. When the participants were followed seven years later, Hubert found that the lack of a positive mental state was a better predictor of death than having psychological symptoms.
The Hubert study is supported by an analysis of 150 studies of wellbeing that have come to the same conclusion: Good mental health can affect your health in ways that are not explained by the simple lack of poor mental health.
But the analysis also found that some aspects of your health are more likely to be affected by luxury. Although well-being had a positive effect on measures of immune system function and pain tolerance, no effect was observed on people with cardiovascular disease. Although another study found that positive psychological well-being can reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases in the first place.
But you are not only likely to benefit if you have positive mental health, there are also benefits to society.
“When we have high levels of luxury, we support society more,” says Hubert. “People who feel happy and satisfied are more likely to be friendly, tolerant and inclusive. This is a straightforward way in which society benefits.”
There also seem to be economic benefits. Sharp, which works with organizations to promote a culture of optimism and mental well-being among its employees, says these companies outperform similar businesses that do not enhance the work of employee welfare.
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