Mental health

Mental health is the level of psychological well-being or an absence of mental illness. It is the state of someone who is 'functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioural adjustment'. From the perspectives of positive psychology or of holism, mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life, and to create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health includes 'subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, inter-generational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others.' The WHO further states that the well-being of an individual is encompassed in the realization of their abilities, coping with normal stresses of life, productive work and contribution to their community.Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how one defines 'mental health'. Mental health is the level of psychological well-being or an absence of mental illness. It is the state of someone who is 'functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioural adjustment'. From the perspectives of positive psychology or of holism, mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life, and to create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health includes 'subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, inter-generational dependence, and self-actualization of one's intellectual and emotional potential, among others.' The WHO further states that the well-being of an individual is encompassed in the realization of their abilities, coping with normal stresses of life, productive work and contribution to their community.Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how one defines 'mental health'. According to the U.K. Surgeon Journal (1999), mental health is the successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with other people, and providing the ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity. The term mental illness refers collectively to all diagnosable mental disorders—health conditions characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior associated with distress or impaired functioning. Mental health and mental illness are two continuous concepts. People with optimal mental health can also have mental illness, and people who have no mental illness can also have poor mental health. Mental health problems might arise due to stress, loneliness, depression, anxiety, relationship problems, death of a loved one, suicidal thoughts, grief, addiction, ADHD, self-harm, various mood disorders, or other mental illnesses of varying degrees, as well as learning disabilities. Therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners or physicians can help manage mental illness with treatments such as therapy, counseling, or medication. In the mid-19th century, William Sweetser was the first to coin the term 'mental hygiene', which can be seen as the precursor to contemporary approaches to work on promoting positive mental health. Isaac Ray, the fourth president of the American Psychiatric Association and one of its founders, further defined mental hygiene as 'the art of preserving the mind against all incidents and influences calculated to deteriorate its qualities, impair its energies, or derange its movements'. Dorothea Dix (1802–1887) was an important figure in the development of the 'mental hygiene' movement. Dix was a school teacher who endeavored to help people with mental disorders and to expose the sub-standard conditions into which they were put. This became known as the 'mental hygiene movement'. Before this movement, it was not uncommon that people affected by mental illness would be considerably neglected, often left alone in deplorable conditions without sufficient clothing. Dix's efforts caused a rise in the number of patients in mental health facilities, which resulted in these patients receiving less attention and care, as these institutions were largely understaffed. Emil Kraepelin in 1896 developed the taxonomy of mental disorders which has dominated the field for nearly 80 years. Later, the proposed disease model of abnormality was subjected to analysis and considered normality to be relative to the physical, geographical and cultural aspects of the defining group. At the beginning of the 20th century, Clifford Beers founded 'Mental Health America – National Committee for Mental Hygiene', after publication of his accounts from lived experience in lunatic asylums, A Mind That Found Itself, in 1908 and opened the first outpatient mental health clinic in the United States. The mental hygiene movement, related to the social hygiene movement, had at times been associated with advocating eugenics and sterilisation of those considered too mentally deficient to be assisted into productive work and contented family life. In the post-WWII years, references to mental hygiene were gradually replaced by the term 'mental health' due to its positive aspect that evolves from the treatment of illness to preventive and promotive areas of healthcare. Marie Jahoda described six major, fundamental categories that can be used to categorize mentally healthy individuals. These include: a positive attitude towards the self, personal growth, integration, autonomy, a true perception of reality, and environmental mastery, which include adaptability and healthy interpersonal relationships.