Mental health deserves to be treated equally with physical health
Physical health has long been valued. If I twist my ankle, it swells, it hurts, my function is impacted, I can’t join in usual activities. In light of that I enlist some self care strategies, I rest it, I elevate the ankle, I apply ice, I might even take an anti-inflammatory as I can get them from the pharmacy. If in a few days I’m still in pain, walking is still hard and I’ve now missed out on my netball game what do we naturally do? Without hesitation we book to see a doctor, physio or other relevant medical professional. Why? We’ve tried some self-care options and they haven’t resolved the issue, we want advice on how to stop the pain, we want to speed up recovery and we want to get back to our usual level of function and activities.
It’s time we align our behaviour and take the same action for our mental health. When we feel stressed, depressed or anxious we feel pain, things are hard, we can’t perform as well as usual at tasks like decision making, communication and emotion management. There are of course things we can do for ourselves such as breathing techniques, exercise, chat with a trusted friend and sometimes that works. Other times those strategies don’t shift our mood or negative thoughts and it feels like we are getting worse. Just like we would for our twisted ankle, this is when we should normalise connecting with a mental health professional in order to decrease the pain, get back to our usual level of function and speed up recovery.
Our mental health deserves to be treated equally with physical health, it is an essential part of our overall wellbeing. Let’s get more comfortable in doing what we would for our physical health when it comes to both being proactive to support good mental health and reactive when things aren’t okay.
