How To Have Good Health

Much of the conversation about mental wellness focuses on mental disorder. But there is more to mental well-being than simply being without mental disorder. Think of mental wellness and a list of mental disorder frequently springs to mind there is depression and nervousness, eating disorders and addictions, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to name just a few. Efforts to raise consciousness of mental disorder mean all of us are now somehow familiar with the more common mental disorders, even when we have never had the personal experience of one. However in latest years, both researchers and clinicians have been moving away from viewing mental wellness with regards to the presence or absence of symptoms. 

As opposed to spending most of his time stopping individuals from being at their worst, he now devotes much of his working life to ensuring individuals are at their best. What's good mental health? Psychologist Martin Seligman has been raising the profile of positive psychology over the past 2 decades. Seligman's notion of good mental wellness boils down to five key domains that together form the acronym PERMA: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, and accomplishments. 

Nevertheless, other researchers believe additional factors also play a role. Felicia Huppert, director of the WellBeing Institute at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Psychology at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University, has been studying mental wellbeing for over 2 decades. She describes mental wellness as being a spectrum. At one end are the common mental disorders and at the other end is positive mental wellness, or flourishing, she says. To define what it means to flourish, Huppert reasoned that attributes of positive mental wellness will be opposite those that define poor mental wellness. 

By looking at internationally agreed measures of depression and nervousness and defining the opposite of every symptom, Huppert distilled a list of 10 features of positive wellbeing. This list includes the 5 PERMA attributes, as well as emotional stability, optimism, resilience, self esteem and vitality. 

What defines positive mental health? The following attributes have been found to be essential for good mental wellness - Positive emotions: all things considered, how happy do I feel? Engagement: taking an interest in your work and activities - Relationships: having individuals in your life that you care for and who care about you - Meaning and purpose: feeling that what you do in life's valuable and useful - Accomplishment: feeling that what you do gives you a feeling of accomplishment and makes you feel competent - Emotional stability: feeling calm and peaceful - Optimism: feeling positive about your life and your future - Resilience: having the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity - Self esteem: feeling positive with themselves - Vitality: feeling full of energy - Why is good mental wellness important? irrespective of the definitions, evidence shows that a healthful mental state is something to strive for. We know that whenever you've a high level of wellbeing, all kinds of other stuff go along with which are really great, like better learning, better relationships, greater productivity, and better health, says Huppert. Even though positive mental attributes and signs of common mental disorder fall at the opposite ends of the mental wellness spectrum, they aren't merely different sides of the same coin.

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