Mental Health Hygiene

Much like brushing one's teeth or washing one's face helps maintain physical health and wellness over the course of the day, mental health hygiene refers to small daily/near-daily tasks one can do to help keep one's mental health at a good baseline. Here we provide a few ideas for such hygiene tasks. You don't have to do all of these every day! But trying to do at least one regularly can be very beneficial.

• Perform some physical activity such as working through a short stretching routine or going for a walk around the block/the building. Try doing this without listening to music or a podcast; just take in your surroundings

• Try mindfulness or meditation at some point during the day. YouTube has a ton of great options here, but a good starting point is taking five minutes to focus on your breath

• Spend a few minutes each day catching up with friends and family

• Before heading to bed, try journaling, or just listing to yourself three to five positive things that happened that day

To read a bit more on mental health hygiene, see this blog post. Remember that while adding mental health hygiene activities to your daily schedule can offer a boost to your mental health, it is not a replacement for talking to a mental health professional about more serious concerns. Just as exercise alone cannot rehab a pulled muscle, mental health hygiene is not a substitute for full medical care. And remember that you don't have to wait until you're struggling with your mental health to try adding these techniques to your routine!

If you have other daily techniques that you find help your mental health, let us know on the Contact Us page!