What is mental health? How can we manage it?

Author: Du Yasong, Chief Physician of the Mental Health Center affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine

What is mental health?

Health includes:

Good health means that the body is free from physical diseases, various physical, developmental, or overall structural problems.

Mental health refers to mental activities and social adaptability, the ability to grow up healthily, adapt to the environment, and do things well. Students can go to school well; adults can do their jobs well; and the elderly can live a good life every day. So mental health may actually be more important than physical health at some times.

Understanding health means understanding physical health, mental health, and social adaptability.

What are the common mental illnesses?

Mental illnesses include, for example, the most serious one, schizophrenia. This kind of patients usually have a disharmony between knowledge, emotion, and will, and a disharmony with the environment. They may have hallucinations, delusions, illusions, and even various kinds of aggressive behaviors, sleep problems, interpersonal relationship problems, etc. This is a schizophrenic, the most common one.

The second is bipolar disorder, which we also call mood disorder.

This situation is relatively rare. It mainly consists of two parts: the first part is manic episode, which means being very active, having high emotions, making many movements, having many behaviors, not sleeping, being full of energy, and being nosy. We call this a manic episode. The corresponding part of manic episode is called depressive episode. Depressive episode means that the thinking is relatively slow, the mood is low, there is no interest in various things, no talking, and the voice is low. This is called a depressive state.

We call these two situations depressive episodes of bipolar disorder, which is the second type of problem.

The third type of problem is common mental disorders, which are caused by various physical diseases. For example, after a stroke, there will be symptoms such as depression and anxiety; for example, after Alzheimer's disease, there will be memory problems, mental symptoms, aggressive behavior, psychotic symptoms, and depression. We call it a physical disease, including the body itself, and also the problems caused by central nervous system diseases. This should be said to be a mental disorder with an organic basis.

There is another condition called paranoid mental disorder. This person is very paranoid and always doubts others in everything he does. He is suspicious and suspects that others are not good to him. This is usually accompanied by some cognitive problems. He always feels that others are not good to him. If there are hallucinations, it is called mental disorder.

Of course, there are some other problems, such as substance dependence, which is quite common nowadays, and the use of active substances can also cause mental disorders.

How to maintain spiritual and mental health

First of all, we must learn to identify our own psychological (mental) conditions and change stress, which many of us can do.

In addition, reducing stress will also reduce anxiety. Can we understand this problem and the cause of the problem? If we can find the cause in reality, we can also make up for it.

Of course, we will have fun when we are feeling down, and that is all right. As long as it is acceptable and can improve your emotional state, all methods can be used, and there is no fixed rule or clear agreement on which one is right and which one is wrong. Just like drinking and smoking, as long as you don't do these things seriously, it is all right.

This article is a work supported by the Science Popularization China Creation Cultivation Program

Team/Author: Deep Science - Du Yasong

Reviewer: He Lingfeng, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, School of Psychology, Shanghai University of Sport

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.