What Exactly is “Mental Health” Anyway?

Why is it that we always say “mental health” like it’s a bad thing.   I know that many mental health concerns are very real battles for people, and although much of my past work makes such battles a topic near and dear to my heart, it is not the focus of what I want to blog about here.

Ok, let’s take a step back and look at a bigger picture.  (I know many of us are here to shrink waist lines, not look at “big” stuff, but hang with me for a second)   

Back when modern psychology got going in the 1890’s (I know, I know, the modern part is a bit of a stretch but it’s a long way from Greece and Rome, so its and all things are relative kind of thing)  people focused mostly on the unusual, the breaks from the norm, the unique.  While this makes for some very interesting reading, it is lacking in everyday usefulness to most of us.  (It’s a lot like that Panini Press you bought 5 years ago, exotic and interesting, but not anywhere near as useful as a frying pan.)   For the next century or so psychology focused on the negative, and that negativity has left a lingering ring around the mental health tub.  While the actual definition of mental health is an absence of mental disorders, the negative connection remains.

Fast forward to 1998 and we get all kinds of cool things; Game Boy Color, Chumbawamba, Google, Dharma & Greg, and the birth of a new way of looking at the mind.  A group of people chose to focus on the good.  They started to study things that were going RIGHT.  What makes happy people happy, successful people successful?   They studied what works, and Positive Psychology was born.

We started talking more about Mental Health being things like; emotional well-being, the capacity to live a full and creative life, and the flexibility to deal with life's challenges.  (Sounds nice doesn’t it?  Like living on a beach in Tahiti.  If there were no such things a volcanoes and hurricanes.) 

So a few psychologists did us solid and broke things down a little further.  They came up with five ways that we exhibit mental healthiness spirituality, work and leisure, friendship, love and self-direction.

And twelve sub categories—sense of worth, sense of control, realistic beliefs, emotional awareness and coping, problem solving and creativity, sense of humor, nutrition, exercise, self care, stress management, and cultural identity. 

 

Excuse me a moment while I let my inner English geek out with some sources here….

Myers, J.E.; Sweeny, T.J.; Witmer, J.M. (2000). "The wheel of wellness counseling for wellness: A holistic model for treatment planning. Journal of Counseling and Development". Journal of Counseling and Development 78: 251–266.