Mental and Mental Health

Mental health is mental characteristics that allow a person to be adequate and successfully adapt to the environment. The opposite of mental health is mental disorders, mental disorders and mental illness.

I do not hear what they say to me, I hear voices that others do not hear. I am strangely indifferent to what cannot but excite, I react violently to the fact that normal people are not offended at all.

At the same time, we found out that the psyche and the soul are not the same thing, the mental and the mental are different things. And then the question arises — is it possible to talk about mental health, as opposed to mental health, and what is mental health?

Unfortunately, we did not find clear definitions for this concept in the psychological literature, so we will have to construct the content of this concept on our own. Let life and practice suggest answers to us.

In the cartoon “Winnie the Pooh and All, All, All”, beloved by children or adults, there are two characters that I really want to compare — this is Eeyore the Donkey and Winnie the Pooh himself. With the psyche of the Donkey Eeyore, everything is in order, he is quite adequate. But the Donkey’s soul hurts… He is an unfortunate Victim, helpless in the face of a large and hostile world. Saviors can’t help him… But Winnie the Pooh, although sometimes he sings strange songs «I’m a gray cloud, I’m not a bear at all!» honey attractive, all friends.

And then we can put forward the assumption that the most adequate indicator of mental health is the emotional tone scale. On a scale of emotional tones, mental illness at the level The world is terrible — the world is hostile, mental health — the level The world is good — the world is beautiful. The world is ordinary — between mental health and ill health.

Mental health is a state when the soul is open to people and the world, cheerful and joyful, does not suffer from pain and does not suffer from enmity. A mentally healthy person is adequate, positive and benevolent. He is prone to a positive worldview, he is characterized by the ease of entering the positive and the difficulty of falling out of the positive. He lives in a high emotional tone, he likes a reasonable level of life tension, the life world for him is beautiful and beloved.

The opposite of mental health is unstable, low or downright bad mood, ease of falling into negativity and difficulty getting out of negativity. Resentments, fears, irritation, fatigue, inability to endure life’s stress … Low emotional tone, hostility, lack of interest in life are signs of weakening mental health. Depression, anger or apathy is already a clear mental illness.

In this understanding, the term «mental health» describes clear and important moments in our lives, while differing from the existing term «mental health».

It seems clear that with the normal preservation of the psyche, with complete mental adequacy, a person can be mentally ill. Neurosis is not yet an indicator of mental illness.

The soul hurts, life does not please, I do not want to live. For many people, this is a long-term norm of life.

It can be the other way around: mental health, cheerfulness with some mental inadequacy.

On the other hand, mental and mental health are not isolated from each other, they understandably influence each other.

Indeed, when the soul hurts, when attention revolves around the past, when a person is tense, on edge and annoyed — of course, he is less focused and is simply not adequate: he can break loose on those who just happened to be next to him. There is no reason to call it a mental illness, however, mental illness begins to manifest itself in moments of mental disorders.

How mental disorders and diseases affect mental health is a separate and special issue, it is now beyond the scope of our interests.

Happiness is beauty in the house of the soul

To make life happy is to bring beauty to your inner home, the home of your soul. If the house is a heavy mess, there is no elementary order, then the task of restoring beauty is not timely. First, put things in order in your soul, gentlemen, and only after that think about beauty — about happiness! Order in the house of the soul is mental health. I hope that in your house, in any case, the roof is in place — if the roof moves out and there is no soil under your feet, it is already a violation of mental health. See →