A Consideration Of Mental Health

Mental health is a term thrown about a lot -- true particularly over the last few decades -- but the full meaning of mental health is typically overlooked. When casual discussions of mental health occur, the focus is often on serious mental disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, sociopathic behavior, and even Alzheimer's. What's left out in such conversations is that mental health is a factor is all of our lives: every one of us.

Mental health emphasis is typically on disorder. A person with some sort of a condition is mentally unhealthy, while a person free of condition possesses mental health. This sort of thinking is problematic in a couple of ways. Firstly, many people with legitimate mental health conditions go undiagnosed. The world is filled with the mentally and emotionally undiagnosed.

The second problem is that mental health is not simply an absence of a diagnosed condition, or presenting symptoms. In other words, mental health isn't simply about lacking; mental health is equally about having.

Optimal mental health means being successfully able to cope with life setbacks; having productive and healthy interactions with family members and friends; having, at the very least, functional relationships with co-workers and other informal acquaintances; and being able to successfully acclimate to society. These are elements that can certainly be lacking in someone without any sort of identifiable mental or emotional illness.

Does lacking the ability to cope with life's challenges and social interaction imply mental illness? Not in most cases, no. However, one might be able to make the argument that dysfunction does rise to the level of mental illness, particularly where people act out, or turn to alcohol or drugs as a means of coping. Addicts or social misfits aren't typically labeled as mentally ill. Altering this reality would encourage scores to seek out mental health treatment.

The counter to opening up definitions of mental illness to include typical dysfunctions, and encouraging more mental health treatment in the process, is that it would be overkill, would be intrusive, would be comparable to medicating large segments of the population at large. But is this really true? Mental health doesn't have to be oppressive or medicating. This isn't some sort of suggestion that pharmaceuticals should be dispensed in greater quantities than they already are.

What mental health should -- should -- encourage is coping technique, not the alteration of one's reality. Going about it this way -- keep the reality, alter the inappropriate coping mechanisms -- needn't involve any sort of medication cycle whatsoever. Mental health treatment history is extensive, and only fairly recently has it involved treatment with medication. Treating psychological function does not require the usage of pharmaceuticals, and that reality needs to be emphasized.

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