The term mental health is thrown around a lot -- this has especially been true during the few decades previous -- but mental health's complete meaning is often misunderstood. Casual discussion of mental health typically focuses on substantial mental disorders: schizophrenia illness, bipolar disease, sociopathic behavior, Alzheimer's, and other conditions. But what's excluded in conversations like this is the reality that mental health factors into everyone's life: all of us.
Mental health emphasis is typically on disorder. A person with some sort of a condition is mentally unhealthy, while a person free of condition possesses mental health. This sort of thinking is problematic in a couple of ways. Firstly, many people with legitimate mental health conditions go undiagnosed. The world is filled with the mentally and emotionally undiagnosed.
Problem number two is that the sole measure of mental health isn't just the absence of disorder. Mental health is just as much about having as not having.
To have optimal mental wellness means successfully coping with life difficulties; having healthy and productive social interactions with friends and family; having stable and functional relationships with informal acquaintances, such as co-workers; and generally being able to acclimate to society at large. These characteristics can absolutely be lacking in persons without apparent psychological or emotional illness.
So if one lacks the ability to productively cope with the setbacks and the interactions that are inherent to existence, are they considered mentally ill? Generally not, though one might make an argument that this sort of dysfunction is, in fact, mental illness. This may be especially true in cases where individuals act out in response to an inability to cope, or use alcohol or narcotics as coping methods. Addicts or people who are hostile or withdrawn in social interactions aren't generally labeled mentally ill. Changing this would encourage scores of people to seek psychological treatment.
The counter to opening up definitions of mental illness to include typical dysfunctions, and encouraging more mental health treatment in the process, is that it would be overkill, would be intrusive, would be comparable to medicating large segments of the population at large. But is this really true? Mental health doesn't have to be oppressive or medicating. This isn't some sort of suggestion that pharmaceuticals should be dispensed in greater quantities than they already are.
What mental health should -- should -- encourage is coping technique, not the alteration of one's reality. Going about it this way -- keep the reality, alter the inappropriate coping mechanisms -- needn't involve any sort of medication cycle whatsoever. Mental health treatment history is extensive, and only fairly recently has it involved treatment with medication. Treating psychological function does not require the usage of pharmaceuticals, and that reality needs to be emphasized.
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