Rethinking mental health, well-being

IT is high time we rethink the definition of mental health.

The way we think, feel and behave depends on a lot of factors, including our backgrounds and habits.

It might be misleading to say the habit of being violent to a spouse is a health problem. Similarly, we cannot conclude that if a person has a phobia of snakes or spiders, that individual has a health problem. Cultural beliefs can result in people making such conclusions. We are going to explore mental health issues and the misconceptions associated with them.

I am going to compare mental well-being with mental health. We are all born in different circumstances and with different support systems around us. These include social care, religions, education and finances. Some people might be exposed to bullying at school, poverty, abuse, neglect and perhaps abandonment.

To describe all those aspects under the health banner could lead to problematic implications for health institutions.

The idea of wellness, however, encompasses much more. Wellness, thus, becomes a much better description of what we seek to interrogate.

This also allows us to explore this through various other cultural interventions.

They include traditional, spiritual and religious interventions.

Whenever a person is disturbed, confused or distressed in a manner that causes alarm among others, what may be required is social intervention to provide reassurance, as opposed to medical diagnosis and a prescription.

As people are raised differently — in different environments, with different cultures, values and means — this creates a certain persona and behaviours that may make it difficult for that individual to relate well with another raised differently. This mostly applies to relationships — personal, business or professional.

Any of the eight pillars of wellness we will look at below can lead to mental distress and misery.

Physical well-being

Lacking basic exercises to maintain fitness can cause muscle atrophy and pains that affect physical health and well-being. Such muscle weakness can affect not only the individual but also others around them in a variety of ways.

Mental well-being

As this is the main subject of our discussion, it can be seen as a component of these many pillars. This can, however, be hidden and misrepresented.

Emotional well-being

Emotions need to be understood for our anxiety can help us achieve something, more than they disable us. Essentially, all emotions are forms of energy that can be channelled towards better use.

Spiritual well-being

These are more of societal conditioning. Sometime back, our forefathers took part in traditional ceremonies, with missionaries introducing Christianity. This led to a shift that saw those traditions being vilified and discarded.

This caused a lot of cognitive dissonance that many people struggle with today.

Social well-being

These are components that help us to navigate around social norms.

These components determine who we become friends with and how we establish and maintain healthy boundaries. This determines the behaviour and type of friends we hang around with. Environmental well-being

This is a critical aspect that can compromise physical and mental well-being. Polluted environments will see people inhale, absorb and ingest unclean elements that cause ill-health on many fronts. Sounds and smells determine mental well-being. Good smells lead to positive thoughts, while loud noises result in irritability and stress.

Financial well-being

For a long time, the economies of African societies were based on barter trade. This has left some Africans struggling to effectively make the transformation from barter trade to modern-day economics. Those with the financial muscle may not invest money in improving their societies, but use it for personal enrichment. The Ubuntu concept has been lost.

Occupational well-being

Many of us have focused more on making money through employment. When we get that money, very little is done in terms of personal development. Let us look at most of our builders or mechanics. We have builders who fail to build their own homes. This is also true of the situation in many other professions, where we do very well in the job but perform poorly on the personal front.

This also applies to social scientists, particularly psychologists, who help others manage their emotions and behaviours, while their own are in turmoil. More often, whenever people hear of mental health, the default thinking is that of the dirty and scary “mad man” eating from bins and talking to himself.

Little is thought of the guy who is struggling to sleep, the guy who is having poor concentration and poor memory, which leads to struggling in school or at work.

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