Psychological wear and tear- Take care of your brains!

The umbrella term of 'mental health' has been an ongoing debate for quite some time now. Public conversations about mental health tend to focus heavily on mental illness instead of a broader topic of general public health. The compounding stigma around mental health issues and illnesses is often exacerbated by a misuse of language. While I am no expert in knowing the most appropriate terminology, I do express my distaste in seeing mental health only being used to describe mental illness. Mental health is not an exclusive issue for those with a diagnosis. 

The discomfort comes from when someone hears mental health, they think to themselves 'Oh that's this disorder, or that kind of sick, that doesn't effect me.' While mental illnesses are identified as very specific classes of health problems, mental health is as a broad of a term as  physical health. It therefore matters to everyone. Mental health problems do not necessarily need to be the onset of mental illnesses. The idea that mental health only equates to mental illness means that us as communities are treating our own mental well-being backwards. It is the inaccurate perspective of- 'I do not need to take care of my mental health because I don't have a diagnosed disorder/ illness'. This is not to discredit or demount the severity of the problems! Rather it highlights some of our ineffective approaches and understanding with taking care of our general day-to-day psychological wear and tear. ​

Mental health matters to every one of us when it addresses things we feel everyday like brain tiredness, stress, worries and flurry of emotions. Our brains' responses to the external world happens biologically, psychologically and socially- all of which are interrelated systems. Understanding your mind is just as important as understanding your own body. A mental illness does not need to exist in order for us to feel psychological distress, which means care for our brain is just as critical. 

​Something like 1 in 5 people in Australia suffer from a mental health problem at some point in their life. The wear and tear trap occurs in 5 of 5. Some manage it better than others, while some can become crippled by it, and I guess that is when you might start to see things like anxiety, depression and other mood disorders creeping in.  So what are you strategies to maintain a healthy body and mind? What are your restorative environments and systems that you have in place to keep you psychologically well? ​