Our healthy diet, mental stability, and good health are the critical factors for meaningful life. Sometimes we do everything for good health like having our meals properly, we do physical activity regularly but at the same time, we ignore our mental health. In this blog, we will let you know about different practices to improve our mindfulness.
Understanding Mental Health
The connection of mind and body are directly correlated to each other. Individuals having good mental health can properly maintain their body’s health. Several factors fluctuate our mental health. Our psychology, emotions, and social well-being affect our thinking, feeling, and actions. All these factors affect the way we handle stress and make decisions.
How much important mental health is?
We already understand what is mental health and talk about the factors that fluctuate mental health. The growth and development of individuals start within the womb of the mother. You can understand the importance of mental health by this evidence that if the mother of the child is depressed or mentally not healthy it can influence the child’s growth and development.
After the child’s birth, mental health can influence the production of breast milk. Due to mental stress, the production of mother milk can slow down. Hence, mental hence can affect individuals at any stage of life either childhood, adolescence, adulthood, or older.
- Strengthen physical Health:
Depression, stress, and anxiety are the major factors that define our mental health. These factors directly fluctuate our body’s growth and development. These can cause many chronic diseases as a result they can impact our physical health. Chronic diseases caused by mental issues include immune disorders, Cardiac diseases, and a metabolic disorder diabetes. So, better mental health can prevent the onset of these diseases and health longevity.
- Better quality of life:
Good mental health prevents individuals from physical health issues as a result it improves the quality of life. A physically healthy individual can enjoy their life at its peak, they think positively, they act positively, and they engage themselves in positive activities. If a person gets some disease due to some other reasons and their mental health is good, they can better cope with the disease and become healthy.
- Positive social networks:
How to interact with others in our social ties directly depends upon our mental health. Good mental health positively influences our social relationships due to good communication and understanding. When you understand the people better in your social gathering, it develops a good bond. Bad mental health negatively impacts our social networking.
Understanding Mindfulness
The term mindfulness is not a modern term, instead, it has been used since past times. Its popularity increased a few years ago when the ratio of mental health issues devastatingly increased. Then, researchers start searching the ways to enhance mental health.
First, you should understand the meaning of mindfulness properly. It means properly concentrating on your present moments. Give a full engagement to the current situation. Without judging, just focus on your thoughts, feelings, and sensations without reacting to them. This practice can be a part of your life by approaching different practices like deep breathing. Further, we will discuss below.
- Decreased Stress:
When you properly understand what mindfulness is then, you start to keep calm and relax. The response against the stress stimulus will be positive and individuals act calmly. The stress hormone in our body is cortisol which induces stress. As a result of mindfulness the cortisol levels decreased and complications of anxiety and stress also decreased.
- Increased Concentration:
The regular practice of mindfulness will keep them concentrated on the current situation and enhance attention. This practice will improve the cognitive function of the brain.
- Emotional Control:
When individuals start this practice, they must be aware of their emotions. They can manage their emotions easily and prevent any emotional damage. Emotional damage can cause mental health issues.
- Improved Self-Awareness:
When you are aware of your emotions, thoughts, and feelings, you are better aware of yourselves. When you better be aware of yourselves you can act better in every stage of personal growth and development.
Risk Factors Affecting Mental Health
Several social, environmental, biological, and psychological factors cause mental health issues like anxiety, stress, and depression. We can develop different strategies after understanding these risk factors.
- Biological Agents:
Several chemicals are present in our brains that can affect an individual’s mood and behavior. For example serotonin and dopamine. Due to some genetic issues, some people are more vulnerable to mental issues. Some chronic issues like diabetes, and cardiac issues can also affect mental health.
- Psychological Patterns:
Some individuals have a high tendency towards negative thoughts, anxiety, and depression which can cause mental health issues. Some horror events in an individual’s life can cause mental damage. Some negative cognitive patterns can also harm mental health.
- Environmental Agents:
The environment in which you live can have a huge impact on your mental health. Some environmental Conditions like marital issues, lack of basic needs, job stress, workplace stress, community and social stress, and social isolation can negatively impact your mental health.
- Lifestyle patterns:
An Individual’s poor lifestyle can impact negatively their health condition as well as mental health. Physical activity and exercise can have a positive impact on mental health. The other major and most beneficial factor is diet and nutrition, a nutrition-rich diet is helpful to support mental health. Sleep disorders can exaggerate health issues. A good sleep of a minimum of 8 hours should be considered safe.
. Cultural and social stigma:
In the era of this fast world, Social media play an important role in maintaining mental health. Some have positive impacts of social media that affect their mental health positively and others have negative.
Social stigma also plays a crucial role in developing mental health issues. Cultural traditions and norms can impact the individual’s thoughts and address how they manage mental health.
Strategies to Boost Mental Health
There are several individual, community, and system base strategies to boost the mental health system:
Mindfulness is an individual approach. Other than this, meditation daily can enhance mental well-being.
A healthy lifestyle like regular physical activity and exercise helps to maintain mental well-being.
Conclusion:
The strong relationship between mental and physical health greatly shows the need for mindfulness and mental well-being. Strong mental health affects not only the individual but also the community. We should adopt strategies by understanding the risk factors that damage mental health.
