Mental Health
What is the health epidemic of the 21stCentury? Most people would probably answer that question with, Cancer, AIDS, H1N1, or even Ebola. Granted, those were, and still are, incredibly destructive threats to global health, so it may come as a bit of a surprise then, when the World Health Organization (WHO) dubs stress as the health epidemic of the 21stCentury. Could not getting a task done in time or failing to get a good score on an exam be more deadly than terminal cancer? The real threat hidden behind the accumulation of failed responsibilities and small annoyances is the overall impact it can have on a person’s mental well-being. This is where the concept of mental health comes in. Misery, mental illness, mental health; all of these are concepts humans have essentially dealt with and tried to define since the birth of civilization. It seems illogical, but after all this time, there is still a problem understanding mental health and how people should deal with it.
The first problem that arises when understanding mental health is that there is no concrete, exact definition of the term. The concept or idea of what mental health is can be very difficult to explain, in simple terms, due to its inexact borders and shifting nature. The first appearance of the concept can be traced back all the way to 1843, when a book titled An Examination of The Intellect And Passions first defined mental hygiene as: the healthy mental and physical development of the citizen. It wasn’t until 1950 when the WHO’s expert committee on mental health, first defined the term mental health as “a condition, subject to fluctuations due to biological and social factors, which enables the individual to achieve a satisfactory synthesis of his own potentially conflicting, instinctive drives; to form and maintain harmonious relations with others; and to participate in constructive changes in his social and physical environment.” Even though there has been some progress on understanding the subject in the recent century, a clear and widely accepted definition of mental health is still missing. And it does not take an expert to notice that the Dorland’s Medical Dictionary does not even have an entry on mental health or that you can find different meanings for mental health and mental hygiene in multiple dictionaries. This lack of a solid foundation, makes the concept of mental health seem like a very thin floor to walk on. When the floor below starts to crack, questions tend to come up.
One of those questions is: are mental health and mental illness the same? They are not. The misconception that these two are interchangeable terms that mean the same creates this negative image around mental health and anything related to it. While mental health may not have an exact definition, it is a fact that everyone has it; mental illness on the other hand, is not something every single person has to deal with. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mental illness as “any of a broad range of medical conditions that are marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, or emotions to impair normal psychological functioning and cause marked distress or disability and that are typically associated with a disruption in normal thinking, feeling, mood, behavior, interpersonal interactions, or daily functioning”. Mental health is similar to regular health in a way that there are different levels of health. One way of looking at the situation is similar to a person walking up and down the stairs; up meaning great mental health and down meaning poor. Most people usually fall somewhere in the middle and strive to move up, but mental illnesses are like heavy backpacks that some unlucky few have to carry, making it harder for them to move up the stairs. Fortunately, like every illness, it can be treated and cured. Unfortunately, like many illnesses, society tends to build a stigma around matters that are difficult to deal with.
The stigma built around mental illness in today’s society makes it even more difficult for people to understand their individual situations and cope with their problems. Everyone is bound to deal with mental health problems the same way everyone occasionally feels unwell due to an illness or a disability. Often times, people in poor mental health, regardless of whether they suffer from a mental illness or not, are held accountable for their mental conditions, as if they were choosing to be in that state. In the same way, they often do not seek medical or professional help because there are no actual physical symptoms that can be pinpointed and treated the way a non-mental illness would.
Mental illness is often a life-long condition with the same, or maybe even more serious, consequences as a physical illness would. Although society is now much more knowledgeable regarding the causes and treatment of mental health problems, there is still a long way to go in order to reach acceptance in society and teaching the common population that mental illnesses are not something to be ashamed of, or ignored.
Works Cited
- Lewis ND. American psychiatry from the beginning to World War II. In: Arieti S, editor. American handbook of psychiatry, 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books; 1974. pp. 28–43.
- World Health Organization. Mental health: report on the second session of the Expert Committee.Geneva: World Health Organization; 1951.
- Webster, Noah. New Collegiate Dictionary. A Merriam-Webster. G. & C. Merriam Co., 1963.