We speak and write often about mental trauma, and how and why psychiatry is not the answer to good mental health care. But we rarely address exactly what mental health is. There are continuous loads of social commentary about mental health without even clearly defining what is good mental health.
We’ll try to remedy that. There are a number of useful approaches to defining good mental health. As usual with most English terms, there are multiple definitions; but we can certainly isolate some common attributes and characteristics. One can delineate both positive and negative characteristics; one can list contributing factors toward good mental health, and alternatively one can list contributing factors toward bad mental health.
WHO Says What is Mental Health
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes mental health as: “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”
For a practical approach, this is a good start.
Additional Approaches to What is Mental Health
We might also call good mental health an absence of psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions, and psychosomatic ills; leading to a state of mental well-being.
The Wales Mental Health in Primary Care Network has an interesting viewpoint of good mental health:
“The central role of relationships in health and wellbeing suggests that relationships set the initial conditions and the simple values that lead to the emergence of health and wellbeing outcomes. Relationships that are positive between people and within organisations are the simple small inputs that lead to the much bigger output of improved outcomes and health gain. … The gold standard for mental health and wellbeing is the gold standard for caring relationships.”
Green Mental Health Care
“Green Mental Health Care is based on the preservation and treatment of the mind and body (for they are not separate functions) using non-toxic, non-addictive, and non-invasive strategies that produces good mental health. Green Mental Health Care has not only proven to be superior in patient outcomes than any other treatment method, including the use of psychiatric drugs, but it achieves the patient’s health goals at a fraction of the cost while saving them from the life-threatening health risks associated with psychiatric drugs.”
What is a Cure?
We generally take cure to mean the elimination of some unwanted condition with some effective treatment. The primary purpose of any mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance, leading to a cure. The only effective measure of this treatment must be “patients recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals.” This, we would call a cure. Psychiatry produces no cures, which they readily admit.
“We do not know the causes [of any mental illness]. We don’t have the methods of ‘curing’ these illnesses yet.” [Dr. Rex Cowdry, psychiatrist and director of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 1995]
“The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future the mentally ill have to learn to live with their illness.” [Norman Satorius, president of the World Psychiatric Association in 1994]
The Effects of Stress
According to top experts, the majority of people having mental problems are actually suffering from non-psychiatric disorders, which can cause emotional stress. We might characterize mental stress as inorganic or organic. Organic conditions are characterized by physical and biochemical indicators, while inorganic conditions manifest only as distressing experiences or undesirable behavior. In either case, an underlying cause would be some form of stress.
An individual’s health level, sanity level, activity level and ambition level are all monitored by their own concept of the dangerousness of their environment. You are as successful as you adjust your environment to yourself, rather than the environment enforcing itself on you which produces stress.
Human Rights and Mental Health
Mental health refers to psychological, social, behavioral, and emotional aspects of health.
The Right to Mental Health is an important human rights issue.
“The right to health contains both freedoms and entitlements. Freedoms include the right to control one’s health, including the right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment and experimentation. Entitlements include the right to a system of health protection (i.e. health care and the underlying social determinants of health) that provides equality of opportunity for people to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health.”
The highest attainable standard of mental health care “includes the provision of equal and timely access to basic preventive, curative, rehabilitative health services and health education; regular screening programmes; appropriate treatment of prevalent diseases, illnesses, injuries and disabilities, preferably at community level; the provision of essential drugs; and appropriate mental health treatment and care.”
What is a Good Patient Outcome?
When we think about the outcomes of mental health care, we can think in terms that are important to the patient, or alternatively in terms that are important to others such as family, teachers, insurance companies, or the attending medical professionals.
A good patient outcome is one that leads toward optimum survival for the patient and all their associations.
The Highest Attainable Standard of Mental Health
It should be obvious by now that the term “mental health” has multiple effective meanings. It should also be obvious that psychiatry is not engaged in good mental health care, so the highest attainable standard of mental health would certainly eliminate psychiatric involvement.
The Bottom Line? Pick one or more of the above standards for good mental health and apply it to your own situations and interests; use them to guide your activities toward a higher standard. After all, good mental health is not a fixed state; one can always aspire and work toward a better state.
