Mental Health

What is mental health ??

Mental health is our emotional, psychological and social well-being. It is about how we feel, think and act. It is an important component of our overall health similar to physical health.

As per the World Health Organization (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.”

why is it important ??

Looking after our mental health can preserve our ability to enjoy life. Doing this, requires reaching a balance between various activities and responsibilities in life. It thus helps us handle stress and make healthy life choices.

Mental health can be affected by stress, depression, anxiety, which in turn can disrupt our routine. Some conditions can cause serious and long-lasting physical health problems like heart disease, diabetes or stroke.

types of mental disorders

Mental health illness may be occasional or chronic. They can affect your ability to relate to others and function each day. There are many types of mental disorders, some common ones are:

Depression
Anxiety disorders
Bipolar disorder
Eating disorders
Schizophrenia
Substance use disorder
Alcohol use disorder

As per 2017 global study, 792 million people were diagnosed with a mental health disorder. This is just over one in ten people.

The graph shows the share of global population with mental disorder for the year 2017. The most common disorder is observed to be Anxiety disorder, which accounts to approximate 4% of the total population. A little less than anxiety is the Depressive disorder, which accounts for 3.5% of the population.

Given the global share of mental health prevalence, the next graph shows the same for top 7 countries. The variation in their population share over 8 years doesn't seem to change much, but all the countries overall share a similar variation in the trend.

Risk factors of mental health

Irrespective of age, income, gender or ethnicity, everyone has some risk of developing a mental health condition. Being mentally healthy is much more than being free of any psychological issues. It is important to have positive characteristics, than not having a mental disorder.

In countries like U.S. and other developed ones, mental disorders are one of the leading causes of disability. Person's mental health can be shaped by factors like finance, biology, society and even their lifestyle choices.

The WHO puts potential contributors of mental health into three categories:

Person's individual behaviour
Their socio-economic factor
Their environmental circumstance

Throughout the life course of such a person, these factors vary significantly. With age, there is a chance of increase in the contirbution.

Effects of mental health

There could be short-term or long-term effects of mental disorder. In short-term it can cause people to be alienated from their peers due to a feeling of loneliness. They may also feel anger, fear, sadness and even helpless if their peers do not understand what is happening.

For long-term, mental disorder has a serious effect. I may drive a person to commit suicide. As per the National Institute for Mental Health, more than 90% of suicides have depression or other form of mental disorder as causes.

mental health and suicide

As suicide remains one of the terminal effects of mental illness, it itself is not a disorder. Mental health happens to be is one of the most important cause of suicide. Such self-harming tendency goes beyond the person attempting that. It not only affects the family and friends but also the community as a whole.

Of all the risk factors for suicide, depression is mostly the reason behind suicide. The values represent an estimate of increased risk of suicide for given disorders. For example, a person with depression is 20 times more likely to die from suicide than someone else.

According to a study in 2015, number of suicides for each country were aggregated as per different age groups and generations. In almost all age-groups, US had the highest number of suicides recorded, followed by Russia and Japan.

When considered on the basis on a certain age group, the one with 15-24 years showed more number of suicides overall. Hence, teen and youth seem to be more vulnerable and and thus prone to depression.

This caused the largest teen-focused social network of After School to conduct a poll with the high school students in 2018. The student were asked 4 questions :

How often are you stressed?
What stresses you out the most?
What are you most likely to do with you're stressed?
What resources do you use to help?

A total of 35,878 teen participation was observed in the poll. Of those, 44.88% teens said they were stressed "all the time" and only 6.3% stated that they were "never" stressed.

The most likely cause of stress was Relationship, accounting for 27.22%

mental health and Quality of life

With all the data, it is evident that there is an inverse relation between mental health disorder and quality of life. Happiness and life satisfaction tends to be lower in people experiencing any mental illness. And when one in ten individuals is not happy, it definitely raises a red flag for our quality of life in future.

Positive mental health helps people to: