Essay: Meaning of Mental Health

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Great! But what does that mean, really?

I’m a words guy. Yes, I talk and write too much, but that’s not my point. I mean that words matter. I had a teacher who used to say, “the clarity with which we define something determines its usefulness.” I couldn’t agree more. So, what do we mean when we say “mental health”?

Let’s start with health.

While I could dissect the bad and useless definitions of health, let’s jump to my favorite. According to the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, “Health is a resource for daily life, not the objective for living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing personal and social resources as well as physical capacities.”

Now, let’s add mental to that. Mental being that which is experienced in the mind, psychologically, and emotionally.

Mental health is a resource for daily life, not the objective for living. Mental health is a positive concept emphasizing personal and social resources as well as physical capacities.

Practically, this means

1. mental health is something to be cared for, built, and used as a resource
2. specifically, as a resource for your particular day-to-day life demands
3. these are inner and outer resources – grow yourself in ways, and a network of relationships, that make better your life and others’
4. it’s positive, so emphasize your strengths to build more strengths
5. your physical capacities – your vitality, physical health, energy, stamina, power, flexibility, and strength – are vital resources that when developed physically will manifest in the mind and in your life, too. Your mind and body are one.

Finally, the phrase and concept of “mental health”, especially mental illness, is often stigmatized; it’s been expressed as something worthy of disgrace and disapproval. Being understanding and helping people in a state of illness is not disgraceful, it’s compassionate, healthy, humane, and caring. More so, supporting people to know, accept, and care about and for themselves, realizing and relying on both the power of our inner and outer resources, strengths, and capacities, along with the ability to grow and develop them, and using that all in service of better living, is worthy of high praise, support, advocacy.

This month, support each other wherever you are and however you are, focus on what you have, what you can grow, and where you can go, and spread the positive word, experience, and meaning of mental health.

Craig Keaton, PhD, LMSW

Director of Wellbeing