by Claire Kernaghan

Created on: September 12, 2008

The term 'mental health' has many meanings, and may mean one thing or for person and another thing to another person, depending on your view of the subject and your own personal interpretation. According to Mosby's Medical Dictionary (2002) mental health is defined as 'a relative state of mind in which a person is able to cope with and adjust to the recurrent stresses of everyday living in an acceptable way' (p.1080).

Generally, most people perceive mental health as a person with a severe personality disorder or someone who is for lack of a better term "crazy". But it means much more than that. Mental health is a person's mental well-being, for example a person who leads a busy life and is extremely stressed has poor mental health compared to someone who leads a relaxed lifestyle with minimum stressors.

The development of mental illnesses generally starts with a number of stressors that occur in a certain time frame and have a significant impact on the person. Furthermore, mental health is completely individual, meaning different people react to different situations differently, and some people cope with stress better than others. For example of you had two people with the same mental illness say depression, their experiences and initiating factors of the illness are completely different, how they cope with the illness is different, how they are treated is different, certainly how they feel is different, and how they react to everyday situations is different as well.

Mental health has come a long way in the last few decades. It has come from complete institutitionalisation, to new strategies and better management leading to deinstitutionalisation. People with a mental illness now are able to live a normal healthy everyday life without the fear of being sent away to a facility or mental asylum. Thankfully those concepts are extinct. Furthermore, thanks to government strategies and awareness campaigns mental illnesses are largely accepted in society and are no longer an 'asylum sentence' but an illness that is manageable and the person is absolutely able to live their life to the fullest capacity.

So, Mental health is much more than being 'crazy' or not. It is how you cope with situations and stressors on an everyday basis. Mental health is not only being healthy, but keeping yourself sane and learning how to cope with stressful situations, because certainly they will arise, and learning how to control undesirable personailty traits such as anger or aggression. Relaxation techniques are commonly employed for people who are excessively exposed to stressful jobs or situations, these may include meditation, yoga or tai chi. Obviously, other techniques have been used but it is not ideal to turn to drugs or alcohol to relieve stress because in the long run, they can be the cause of it.

Reference: Mosby's medical, nursing and allied health dictionary (2002) 6th edition. Mosby's: USA.

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