Mental Health Is Great Health

Thanks to Zahra for sharing these thoughts on the importance of paying as much attention to our mental wellbeing as our physical health.

Mental health is not a matter of having a lack of sad life experiences; it is learning how to keep a healthy mind in spite of those experiences. 

In order to stay healthy, it is important for us to routinely have our health checked and to highlight all of our medical appointments in our diary. From an early age, we learn to take responsibility for our body, such as dental, eye and sexual health, as well as diet. Doctors who check our overall health spend time updating our personal and family medical history. 

Mental health is another service for keeping us well and should be part of our routine health check up. We need to ensure that we are maintaining a healthy mind and practice for wellbeing, as our mind is an essential tool to serve our body in order to help us live well.

When we endure experiences in our life which our thoughts are unable to digest, our minds get sick and we suffer emotional pain. Trying to ignore these exceptional experiences and hide them away from others, we find ourselves unable to eat, concentrate, sleep, play or work. But it is really important that we address the causes of these physical symptoms and ask for help in learning how to deal with these experiences.

Nietzsche described mental health as "great health" that helps us to accept our experiences as knowledge of our body. Whenever we feel fear, anger, sadness, despair, irritation, confusion and frustration, we must remember that we still have in our hands unrevealed potential for happiness to move positively on in our lives!