What is mental health?
Mental health professionals are often asked the question “what is mental illness?” or, for that matter, what is “mental health?”
These are not easy questions to answer because factors such as cultural, family, individual and society’s beliefs strongly influence what is defined as mental illness and mental health.
Defining mental health & disorder
What do you think mental health, mental illness and mental disorder are? Write your own definitions in your reflective journal. At this point your definitions are likely to reflect your own experiences and acculturation. By recording your ideas and attitudes now you will have a useful reflective point to return to as the unit progresses.
Finding a definition for mental health and mental illness can be difficult because these can mean different things for each individual. For example in one culture hearing voices or seeing things that are not evident to others may be a valued part of religion and a gift to the selected few, whereas in another culture these may be considered signs of insanity. Likewise what one family considers being ‘normal behaviour’ may be quite unacceptable and foreign to another.
However, you will find various definitions in the literature. Here are a couple of definitions of mental health and illness to consider.
Mental Health
- The capacity of individuals within groups and the environment to interact with one another in ways that promotes subjective wellbeing, optimal development and use of mental abilities (cognitive, affective and relational) and achievement of individual and collective goals consistent with justice. (Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged care 2000, p 127)
- A relative state of mind in which a person who is healthy is able to cope with and adjust to the recurrent stresses of everyday living in an acceptable way. (Mosby’s medical, nursing, and allied health dictionary. 5th Edition 1998)
Mental Illness/disorders
- Any disturbance of emotional equilibrium, as manifested in maladaptive behaviour and impaired functioning, caused by genetic, physical, chemical, biologic, psychologic, or social and cultural factors. (Mosby’s medical, nursing, and allied health dictionary. 5th Edition 1998)
- In this act “mental Illness” means a condition that seriously impairs, either, temporarily or permanently the mental functioning of a person in one or more of the areas of thought, mood, volition, perception, orientation or memory and is characterised by the presence of at least one of the following symptoms:
- delusions
- hallucinations
- serious disorder of the stream of thought
- serious disorder of thought form.
(NT Mental Health Related Services Act 1998.)
As you can see, definitions for both mental health and mental illness are lengthy and very subjective. A lot of textbooks talk about mental health and mental illness being viewed as end points on a continuum. We all move along this continuum throughout our life span, i.e. sometimes we are healthy while at other times, such as when we are stressed or physically unwell we will move along the continuum toward mental illness.