Maintenance of Mental Health Introduction
MENTAL HEALTH 91
- Author:
TORRIE, M.A., M.B., D.P.M.
Medical Director, National Association for Mental Health This introductory survey is designed to give some idea of the general aspects of mental health, and subsequent articles by different contributors will apply these to infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age and old age.
Definition
In one sense there is no such person as a normal human being, perhaps with one exception. The term refers to those who come within the upper and lower limits of the normal.
Mental health specialists gathered together at the International Congress in August of last year made it fairly clear that the subject cannot be studied otherwise than as a problem affecting many disciplines, so that its scope has become very much wider.
The inner needs, drives, motives, desires and dreams of the individual, must be related to the environment in which he lives, thus affecting a relationship. The word ” mental ” still has a connotation in most minds with lunacy or imbecility. There are many causes for this: a deep fear of insanity or loss of emotional control is present in many. An Association, such as the National Association for Mental Health is handicapped by its title. To produce an alternative is a difficult task, and many feel that education of the public in the wide meaning of the term ” mental health ” is all we can rely on.
It will be recognized that to be mentally well requires physical health. An increasing number of psychiatrists would also add that spiritual well-being is necessary for total health or wholeness.
Adaptability.
Positive mental health also demands that we meet the unavoidable strains and stresses of life with adaptation or assertiveness leading to the effecting of change. It implies that we adapt to people in our environment in such a way that we can live harmoniously in a healthy social relationship with them. This might mean disagreement as well as agreement. We have to accept inherited needs and recognize that they must be, as far as possible, planned with the needs of our community in mind.
At the present time of transition and change, there is much minor mental ill health, because of resentment and inability to change with the changing world. This resentment inevitably affects our total health, physical and mental. For many years now we have had deprivations and denials to tolerate, and the inability to adjust, or our refusal to adjust in many cases, leads to emotional instability.
The Need to Understand Ourselves
A knowledge of our own mental mechanisms will give us some insight and power over them. Between the wars much education was given on the normality of fear, and as a result it has been suggested that the grosser forms of shellshock were rarely seen in World War Two because there was no special shame about the normal feeling of fear. To-day a knowledge of the normality of our hostility should lead to fewer inner conflicts. A world federation is impossible as long as we cling to national sovereignty. The inability to add wider loyalties to local loyalties, leads to much avoidable hostility. The normal mentally healthy individual tries to understand his own need for a scapegoat and for stereotyped attitudes, shaking himself free from the pre-determined habit of making automatic judgments which are far from sensible. A realization of our inadequacy will give us an understanding and tolerance which will make for better personal relationships. The tendency to add our own phantasy picture to our inner and outer environment makes us develop motives that are out of keeping with the situation as it is. The capacity to grow at all ages is a sure sign of adaptation to the present. The reverse indicates immaturity, which is perhaps the greatest single cause of deviations from the normal.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.