How's your mental health?
Posted by kathryn in Mental & emotional health
Quit smoking, lose weight, eat a healthy diet, exercise more: these are the well-known ways to health and wellbeing. However, in concentrating on the physical, we often forget another vital part of health: emotional wellbeing.
Being happy, having good self-esteem, knowing who you are and where you’re going, are as much a part of good health as eating your vegies.
Mental Health Week
It’s National Mental Health Week here in Australia, and Wednesday is World Mental Health Day. Therefore, this week on Limes & Lycopene I’m going to be posting all about emotional wellbeing. Topics will include:
- food and mental health
- Mental Health Week events
- online resources
- what other bloggers and websites are saying
- simple strategies for nurturing your mental health on a daily basis
How to take part
- If you’re a blogger and are writing about mental health this week, then let me know in the comments below or by sending an email and I’ll include you in the blogging round-up.
- If you’ve been reading any good mental health websites or blogs, then let me know. I’m interested in what you’ve found useful?
- Send me any mental health questions and I’ll try to answer them during this week’s Mental Health Week Q & A Thursday.
- Do you have any mental health experiences you’d like to share? I’d love to know your story, plus what advice and strategies helped you? You’re of course welcome to post anonymously or let me know directly by email.
Mental ill-health has touched my life personally. While I’m not a psychiatrist, psychologist or mental health professional, emotional health is something I work with regularly during clinic.
I’m hoping this week will be helpful for everyone.
Technorati tags: “mental health week”, mental health week
08 October, 2007
Comments
Mental health is perhaps the most important constituent of health – well, equally as much as your physical health. Without being mentally healthy, it’s hard to commit to being physically healthy.
I always say that you should picture the way you want to look, imagine the way you want to feel, and then make the right steps to try and achieve that mental image, that feeling of being healthy.
But then, the mind doesn’t work that way, as simple as that and it’s hard to motivate someone when they don’t want help.
I am neither a psychiatrist or psychologist either, though have had close contact with ill mental health. I know the devastating effects it can have on the network of people trying to support that individual. Like physical health, treatment, advice and actions can vary in order to get the person experiencing ill mental health to get “healthier”. And the cause of ill mental health in one person can be very different to the cause of another, just as in ill physical health symptoms. I think of Rene Rivkin, who although had all the money in the world, all the material possessions and ‘business success’ before him, was a manic depressant.
Do people believe that a lot (not all by any means, but a lot) of mental health issues within Western culture/society manifest because of the sociocultural expectations, pressures, materialistic measures of success, or the ideal? I’m sure there are many contributing factors, and again, do not wish to simplify this serious health matter. This is just a pet hate of mine I guess, in that ‘happiness’ which is an emotional state of wellbeing, a mental state of health, seems to be measured an awful lot these days on material success, what the ‘majority’ (or the minority in persuasive positions) dictate. Here I think of anorexia and bulimia.
That’s my little rant. Off my soapbox now and into bed.
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/08/2053727.htm?section=justin
Sorry, one last thing, after this I am goneskis for the night.
I recently read BRW’s Young Rich edition. It was a great read. And I know it’s a business publication, yadda, yadda, yadda, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see a Rich Families edition where they have a mix of financial benchmarks/rankings and family benchmarks/rankings to evaluate who really has the richest families?
Just a thought BRW.
Night!
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