Mental Health: Why is it so important while being so underrated?

"A sound mind lives in a sound body." But does it, really?

---

Ahnaf Anjish | March 6, 2021

We know many famous proverb highlighting the importance of physical health and exercise, like,

“Health is Wealth”

or,

“Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness.”
– Joseph Pilates.

But, can you really be happy if you cannot get out of your bed in the morning due to clinical depression and want to kill yourself? Or imagine, you are lifting a dumbell and you want to break your very own head cause you wanna escape from all the pains you have inside. Or you might be in a math class and you cannot concentrate cause your brain is constantly telling you to kill yourself? Relatable, right?

And this is the very reason why we should give enough attention to our mental health. But, what actually is "Mental Health"? According to WHO,

"Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community."

To put it simply, Mental Health is your ability to think rationally and logically. It gives you a sense of power and control over your ownself, and it has the capability to keep you happy and productive as well. When a person is mentally ill or not-okay, that's when the problem begins.

But, what do I mean by being "Mentally Ill" or "Mentally Not-Okay"? Well, Mental Illness indicates to mental disorder. As I've argued in another post that Mind is a process, we can actually say that Mental Illness is something internal that hinders you from thinking and analyzing anything. Here, the term "Internal" refers to your nervous and endocrinological system, but let's put it away for some another day.

So, there are various ways or determinants to determine your mental health condition; mostly based on multiple social, psychological, and biological factors. I would like to discuss them briefly before getting into my main argument.

According to WHO, violence and persistent socio-economic pressures are recognized risks to mental health. The clearest evidence is associated with sexual violence. Poor mental health is also associated with rapid social change, stressful work conditions, gender discrimination, social exclusion, unhealthy lifestyle, physical ill-health and human rights violations. There are specific psychological and personality factors that make people vulnerable to mental health problems. Biological risks include genetic factors.

So, What makes it so important?

Human behaviour is always prone to darkness or to unknown things, and we fear them the most. Naturally, we cannot see or read someone's mind whereas we can easily understand whether someone is physically ill or not. But the truth is, human mind is the most-unique that makes us different from other creatures. So, even though it is complex, it has a distinct health condition. It's health condition is so much important that if it's suffering, then you will suffer. For example; if you have a slight fever or you have cold, then you might be okay with little to no medications - as your body has its very own immune system to fight against unwanted germs and bacterias. But for mental illness, it is your body that is sick. And that's why there's no internal immune system to fight against it. If you have a mental health condition, you will suffer based on its severity. You probably won't be able to do all the things you used to did once to keep yourself "physically" healthy, as mentioned in the introduction.

So, Why is it so underrated or neglected? Or why are we so much stigmatized about it?

Now that we know how important your mental health really is, then we may ask why we do not give enough attention to it. Simple. Because WE DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT. Well, it is not the only reason, but it is the most important one in my opinion. And probably it is the reason why WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT IT. I would like to list some of the other important reasons down below,

• Firstly, it is not in our educational system. We are not taught about EQ (Emotional Quotient, also known as Emotional Intelligence) at our institutions. We learn about mitochondria and plastid, but we do not know how to regulate our mind and emotions.
• Most of our parents do not understand a single thing about mental health or mental illness, let alone teaching us this very unique aspect of this species. Especially in this sub-continent, where people spend most of their time bullying other people (mostly online) or doing superstitious chores; it is quite hard to imagine someone from that generation who understand it based on their common-sense. But hopefully, we will change for the better in future.
• The most common reason is the Society. I hate to say this; but we want to be accepted by the cruel society at all costs, rather than making the society kind enough to accept and respect people of all types. We often wonder What will people say?, and then leave our passion and happiness to keep our head "high" on other people's eyes.
• The next point is the internet. As social sites can easily make people addicted, cyber-bullying is another cause behind mental illness. I might call my friend "fat" today, and probably he will laugh outside; but we never know what is going on inside his mind?
• As psychology is a quite new term, and visiting a therapist costs a lot; people tend to believe that mental illnesses onlu happen to the rich. And as we have a potrait of a rich person in our mind, we think that only doing those works can bring mental illnesses.

Now that we have detailed the reasons why it is so importand while being so stigmatized, we should also know how we can change for the better. I believe that you certainly do understand what are the things we need to change. And if you have any other reason you think or hypothesis on this topic, please let me know in the comments below. Thank you all very much.