What is mental health, and how do you see its importance?

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.

Mental health is more important now than ever before. When we focus on it, virtually every aspect of life can be better off. The importance of good mental health ripples into everything we do, think, or say. 

Reasons to care for mental health

There are many reasons we should care about mental health. Maintaining it is crucial to stabilizing constructive behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. Focusing on mental health care can increase productivity, enhance our self-image, and improve relationships. 

Nurturing mental health doesn’t just let us perform better in our daily functions. It can also help us control — or at least combat — some of the physical health problems directly linked to mental health conditions. For example, heart disease and stress are related, so managing stress might have a positive outcome on heart disease.

Other benefits of taking care of our mental health can include:

• Improving our mood
• Reducing our anxiety
• Creating an enhanced sense of inner peace
• Thinking more clearly
• Improving our relationships
• Increasing our self-esteem
  

“Our mental health is something that impacts our eating and sleeping habits and has a lot to do with our physical health as well. It is important to address our mental health needs, or oftentimes we will feel the impact of it in other areas of our health as well.”

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.