What is Good Mental Health?

In my previous post, I brought up the idea of "good mental health".  I wanted to give a little more context to that idea. According to Wikipedia, "Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It influences cognition, perception, and behavior. It also determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making."

Furthermore, according to mentalhealth.org.uk, "Good mental health is not simply the absence of diagnosable mental health problems, although good mental health is likely to help protect against development of many such problems."

They go on to say the following:

"Good mental health is characterized by a person’s ability to fulfil a number of key functions and activities, including:

• the ability to learn
• the ability to feel, express and manage a range of positive and negative emotions
• the ability to form and maintain good relationships with others
• the ability to cope with and manage change and uncertainty."

In the context of this blog and the topics within, "Good mental health" simply refers to these things above. 

So, how does one measure good versus bad mental health in the context of the definitions above? It takes a bit of introspection and meta awareness to grade oneself. I think that it can be operationalized but I am not sure how much detailed analysis I can bring to bear on this. I think creating some simply milestones might be a good idea. I will need to explore this further.

If we accept these definitions of "Good mental health" and we come up with a way of measuring it, how do we work on ourselves to improve our mental health?  After all, I would wager that most of us could benefit from improving our well being. Even if we are happy most of the time, there are always gains to be made. 

According to Dr Sapna Zarwal in her article posted here: https://www.healthshots.com/mind/mental-health/this-five-step-guide-to-boost-your-mental-health-will-always-come-in-handy/ , there are 5 simple things we engage in to help boost our mental health. 

1. Surround yourself with positive people
2. Practice mindfulness
3. Take a break from the digital world and gadgets
4. Learn to say ‘no’
5. Focus on helping others

So now that I have laid out some definitions and some behaviors to strive for, the next step will be to operationalize some of these things. What specific tasks help boost mindfulness for instance? Can I set aside some "no-gadgets" allowed periods? What can I do to give back or help others? How many times did I feel down or augmentative or have other negative emotions? Of course this will mean paying attention to these things and making a concrete note of their occurrence. That can be hard, especially when you are talking about observing oneself. But with practice, I think it can be accomplished. And, I think the benefits of such an endeavor are plentiful.