What is Mental Health?

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.

Over the course of your life, if you experience mental health problems, your thinking, mood, and behavior could be affected. Many factors contribute to mental health problems, including:

• Biological factors, such as genes or brain chemistry
• Life experiences, such as trauma or abuse
• Family history of mental health problems​

Mentalhealth.gov (2022)

​​What is Mental Health Wellness?

Mental wellness is a lifelong process and a proactive strategy to strengthen our mental, emotional, social, and psychological resources. On one level, mental wellness is about prevention; coping with life’s adversity; and being resilient when we face stress, worry, loneliness, anger, and sadness. On another level, mental wellness moves us toward a deeper, richer, and more meaningful human experience, which is often described as flourishing. mental wellness is a dynamic, renewable, and positive resource, and as an active process that requires initiative and conscious action.
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• Mental: How we think; how we process, understand, and use information.
• Emotional: How we feel; how we manage and express our emotions.
• Social: How we connect; our relationships with others.
• Psychological: How we act or function, or how we “put the pieces together;” taking external inputs along with our internal capacity and then making decisions or doing things.