Psychological health is the optimal functioning of all mental structures necessary for current life activity. Mental health is not only mental, but also personal health. This is a state when mental health is combined with personal health, everything is bright and cool for a person, and at the same time he is in a state of personal growth and readiness for such growth. A psychologically healthy person is reasonable, open to cooperation, protected from the blows of life and armed with the necessary tools to cope with life’s challenges.
A psychologically healthy person, see → differs from a person with a psychological problem, see →. They have different behavior (primarily social behavior) and different personality structure.
Psychological health describes the personality as a whole, is related to the emotional, motivational, cognitive and volitional spheres, as well as the manifestation of the human spirit.
The main criteria for psychological health: adequate perception of the environment, conscious performance of actions, activity, efficiency, purposefulness, the ability to establish close contacts, a full-fledged family life, a sense of attachment and responsibility in relation to loved ones, the ability to draw up and implement one’s life plan, orientation towards self-development , the integrity of the individual.
But neurotics, psychopaths and sociopaths are beyond the scope of psychological health. This includes people with the main bouquet of internal psychological problems: aggressiveness, alcoholism, sick attachments, an internal saboteur, people in grief and depression, lovers of living in the position of the Victim or inclined to play Durik, suffering from one or another burnout, psychological trauma and fears, tormented by guilt and internal crisis…
A. Maslow on psychological health
Mental health not only fills a person with a subjective sense of well-being, it is in itself correct, true and real. It is in this sense that it is «better» than the disease and «higher» than it. It is not only correct and true, but also more truthful, for a healthy person is able to see more truth, and a higher truth. The lack of psychological health not only depresses a person, but it can be considered as a kind of blindness, cognitive pathology, as well as a form of moral and emotional inferiority. Ill-health is always inferiority, weakening or loss of the ability for activity and self-fulfillment.
Healthy people are few, but they are. We have already shown that health with all its values - truth, virtue, beauty — is possible, and, therefore, quite real and achievable. If a person strives to be sighted and not blind, wants to feel good, not bad, prefers wholeness to inferiority, we can say that he is seeking psychological health. I remember a girl who answered the question: “Why is good better than evil?” She replied, «Because it’s better.» Following the same logic of reasoning, we can say that living in a “good society” (fraternal, synergistic, trusting, built in accordance with Theory Y) is “better” than in a society ruled by the law of the jungle (in an authoritarian, evil. built in accordance with Theory X) is better both from a biological, medical, Darwinian point of view, and from the point of view of “humanization”, better both subjectively and objectively (314). The same is true of a good marriage, a good friendship, a good parent-child relationship. Such relationships are not only desirable (a person prefers them, strives for them), but is also “desirable” in a certain sense. I realize that this way of framing the question can be a serious problem for professional philosophers, but I’m sure they can handle it.
The fact that a person can be good, healthy, and that such people exist — even if they are few and they are molded from the same dough as the rest — in itself instills in us courage, hope, determination and faith in a person and his growth opportunities. This belief in the possibilities of human nature, even the most timid one, will push us to build a society based on the principles of brotherly love and compassion↑.