Mental health can affect daily life, Relationships and Physical Health.
However, this link also works in the other direction. Factors in people’s lives, relationships, and physical factors can all contribute to mental health.
Taking care of mental health can protect a person’s ability to enjoy life. Doing so involves balancing life’s activities, responsibilities, and efforts to gain psychological flexibility.
Conditions such as stress, depression and anxiety can affect mental health and disrupt a person’s routine. Although the term mental health is in common use, many of the conditions that doctors recognize as psychiatric disorders have physical roots.
In this article we explain what is meant by people’s mental health and mental illness. We also describe the most common types of mental disorders, including their early symptoms and how to treat them.
The WHO emphasizes that mental health is “more important than the absence of mental disorders or disabilities.” Peak mental health is not only about avoiding active situations but also about maintaining good health and happiness.
He also emphasizes that maintaining and restoring mental health is important on an individual basis as well as in different communities and societies around the world.
In the United States, the National Coalition on Mental Illness estimates that 1 in 5 adults suffers from mental health problems each year.
Risk Factors for Mental Health Conditions
Everyone is at risk for mental health problems, regardless of age, gender, income or race.
In the United States and most of the developed world, mental illness is one of the leading causes of disability. Social and financial conditions, biological factors, and lifestyle choices can all shape a person’s mental health.
A large proportion of people with mental health disorders suffer from more than one condition at a time. It is important to note that good mental health depends on a delicate balance of factors and that many elements of life and the world together can contribute to disorders.
The following factors can interfere with mental health.
Continuous Social and Economic Pressure
Having limited financial resources or belonging to a backward or oppressed ethnic group can increase the risk of mental health problems.
A 2015 study of a of 903 families in Iran identified a number of socio-economic causes of mental health conditions, including poverty and living on the outskirts of a large city.
The researchers also described differences in the availability and quality of mental health treatments for certain groups in terms of variable factors, which may change over time, and unchanging factors, which are permanent.
Modifiable factors for mental health disorders include:
- socioeconomic conditions, such whether work is available in the local area
- occupation
- a person’s level of social involvement
- education
- housing quality
Nonmodifiable factors include:
- gender
- age
- ethnicity
Common Mental Health Disorders
The most common types of mental illness are as follows:
- anxiety disorders
- mood disorders
- schizophrenia disorders
Medication
Some people take prescribed medications, such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anxiety medications.
Although they do not treat mental disorders, some medications can improve symptoms and help a person resume social interactions and normal routines while working on their mental health.
Some of these drugs work by increasing the absorption of good chemicals from the brain into the body such as serotonin. Other drugs either increase the overall levels of these chemicals or prevent their degeneration or destruction.
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