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It maybe important to keep in mind that as we describe what is Mental Health that the more general a description the less likely any practical value can be found; however, there maybe great value if the general description can provide a foundation for further detail and clarification of the most important idea underlying Mental Health. The term "mental health" describes the maintenance of an individual's state of being, pointing directly to its variability, and the variability is to that of both emotion (the way we "feel") and cognition (the way we "think").
For a deeper look at emotion please visit the earlier post: Oops Salt Instead of Sugar. The way we think, or our cognition, is not or intelligence or a type of thinking, e.g. a philosophy, but is instead our psychology, our way of thinking on a psychological level. But to stay on task we must look at what is being maintained under the umbrella of mental health. The idea of an individual's mental health is potentially meaningless if it doesn't include their "psychology" as a crucial component of what is being maintained. While each of these terms (mental health v. psychology) are often and unfortunately interchanged at times, they point to something different, and the idea of mental health is actually dependent upon the idea of a person's psychological makeup. Mental health is the care, or maintenance, of an individual's emotional and cognitive capacities, their "mental" state. The "mental" aspect is none other than their psychological aspect. When looking at a person's mental health, we are not looking at their cognitive abilities alone. We are also not looking at their intellectual abilities alone--even though an individual's intellect is a peripheral area of interest. The area that is most directly related to an individual's mental health is their psychology, and Psychology is far too often, a much too general of an idea to provide value or concrete understanding. The idea of Psychology can be broken down into two main area's: (1) the Psyche -- consisting of the Ego, Id and Superego (the "psychological" cognition), and (2) the pairing of Emotion v Feeling. For the direct purposes of clarification the terms "psychology" and "mental health" must not be interchangeable. Interchangeability indicates sameness and if the terms are the same then one of them is potentially irrelevant; therefore, the terms are not interchangeable, and instead, complimentary. If we understand and agree that an individual's mental health is related to its maintenance and the "maintenance" has to do with the variability of the states of being which are either functional, or dysfunctional (i.e. the individual's psychology), then we have a clearer foundation on which to construct a detailed path to the proper maintenance of an individual's mental health. And maybe that with the above clarification the remaining question can be simplified without becoming an over simplification: What then is an individual's "psychology" and how is it related to variable states of being (which is more than likely highly connected to their emotions states)?
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Let’s begin by making a distinction between an everyday problem that has no root in your psychology and a clearly psychological problem that is rooted in your past, in the history of your life. The everyday problem makes its presence known at various moments throughout your day and while it may be off-putting to various degrees it does not form a pattern.
An example of this would be a flat tire. If you are to go out to your car and find one of its tires flat, this would not automatically indicate there is some deep psychological trauma; however, if you were to consistently find yourself flummoxed by flat tires, then the question should arise as to why have you repeatedly been confronted with such a problem? Is it that you do not remember the ever deepening pot-hole, that you repeatedly run over? Is it that you are constantly “low” on funds and have not been able to devote the money to the replacement of old tires? The point is that there are general, happenstance, occurrences, problems that you may have no way of knowing or predicting, but a psychologically rooted problem can be predicted and you may even been fully aware of the patterned nature but have not been able to alter its reoccurrence. The psychologically rooted problem occurs similarly to the general problem, but to the extent that it repeats itself in a pattern distinguishes it from a general everyday problem. It is the repetition of the psychologically rooted problem that gives you a clear signal, that is—if you can become aware of the pattern, you are dealing with an unresolved issue from your past. So the first step is making a distinction between the general problem and the psychological problem and this can initially be made with the identification of a pattern or repetition. The next step is to isolate the context for which the psychological problem is reoccurring. The context is related to the who, what, when, and where, while the how and why of the context is essentially the groundwork of your past and the psychological material to be discovered. |
Edited and composed by Mathew Quaschnick
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