What Is Mental Wellness?
As per the available statistics about mental health status in India, one in twenty people in India suffering from depression; every hour a student commits suicide; India accounts for 17% of the people who commit suicide across the world; nearly 80% of those who commit suicide are literates; 7.5% of Indians suffer from major or minor mental disorders; every two hours a person dies because of substance abuse. There are many other numbers available which are worrisome.
Presently, the policy and legislature related to mental healthcare in the country are mostly focussing on mental illness and treatment and not wellness. That means, by and large, we have not been following the philosophy of “prevention is better than cure”. However, then the question is, “what is mental wellness?”
Though we all know that “mental wellness is not just the absence of mental illness, but beyond that”, we have not come out with a concrete understanding about mental wellness per se. Singapore Association of Mental Health (SAMH) says “mental wellness is a positive state of mental health. It is more than the absence of mental illness”.
World Health Organisation defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realises their own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”
However, the question further is, how to move towards mental wellness? Because that has become one of the major questions for many people!
When I analyse the aspect of mental wellness, I feel that there are several facets to it. I believe, when the mind is at ‘REST’, that would be a state of mental wellness. REST is an abbreviation for different things. They are, R stands for resilience and reflectivity; E stands for the equilibrium of A, B and C where A is affection, B is behaviour and C is cognition; S stands for a sense of satisfaction, fulfilment and gratitude and T stands for true perception. Let me elaborate one by one.
Resilience:
According to Psychology resilience is an individual’s ability to successfully adapt to life tasks in the face of social disadvantage or highly adverse conditions. The adverse conditions can be anything from interpersonal relationships to health issues to financial worries and so on.
Reflectivity:
It is all about reflecting on oneself. One can reflect upon emotions, behaviours, beliefs, values, cognition and so on. Reflection gives a deeper insight into ourselves, which would basically help us understand the answer to the question “who am I?”. Though reflectivity is a continuous and never-ending process, that helps us to stay human and humble.
Equilibrium of A, B, C:
As human beings, it is natural for us to face ups and downs in life. Sometimes we may have everything going as we wish for, and sometimes it may be the exact opposite. Our affection (emotions), behaviour and cognition will vary accordingly based on the circumstances. We may keep moving from one corner of the continuum to another. However, staying in one corner would be problematic. Hence, coming back to equilibrium is very important. If a person is able to come back to equilibrium position from wherever he/she is, in terms of affection, behaviour and cognition, then that will certainly add for mental wellness.
Sense of satisfaction, fulfilment and gratitude:
When we observe many people, they are mentally sick because they have no satisfaction in life. They don’t have a sense of fulfilment. They are also not grateful for whatever they have! It is important for a person who lacks all these three aspects to analyse what is the major reason for this lacuna. In one of the studies on happiness, it was found that there was no much difference in the level of happiness between a person who is able to fulfil the necessities of life and the one who leads a luxurious life! Therefore, all these three aspects are not dependent on the material wealth and they are based on the individual’s attitude and belief.
True perception:
Many a time we spoil our mind because of misperceptions. We imagine lots of things without getting deeper into the facts. Illusions and hallucinations would lead to another level of mental illness.
Imagine two people are talking and in between, they see you for one or two times. You observe them looking at you. Then you may start thinking that maybe they were talking about you and cooking up some story behind you. This may disturb your mind, you may lose sleep and get irritated. However, if you go and ask those two chaps, then you may realise that looking at you was just a coincidence and their conversation had nothing to do with you.
Apart from this, when a person is peaceful with his/her internal and external world, that would also keep the mind at rest.
Therefore, if a person is able to achieve REST, then more or less mental wellness would be assured.
