Focus Area 8: Mental Health Basics
2. What is Mental Health

Understanding what mental health encompasses will give you a framework for recognizing common mental health disorders. So, let’s start with an easy way to think about mental health. Here’s how the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services¹ sees it:

• Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
• It affects how we think, feel, and act.
• It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.

Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.

That is a very straightforward way to define mental health. Just like physical health, mental health is more than the absence of disease or a mental health disorder. It isn’t just that you’re not sick, so to speak, it’s more a state of overall mental well-being.

To better understand this distinction, consider how the World Health Organization (WHO)² describes mental well-being:

“…a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”

As you begin to explore the signs and symptoms of mental health disorders now, keep this understanding of mental health in mind so you can compare and contrast along the way.