In this opportunity I will start my first publication in this community, talking about a subject to which I study and plan to dedicate myself, Mental Health, and upon learning that there is a scientific community for these issues, I found no better time to talk about this construct, which although it is very important for the development and proper functioning of the human being, is quite scarce in public and social policies and redirected to the individual space of a certain sector of the population.
Before I start I introduce myself my name is Omar Quintero, I am 23 years old and I am a student of the 7th semester of Bachelor in Psychology, I recently started in Hive on November 7 of this year and one of my ideas to develop content here is to talk about this kind of topics, to share what I learned from college and study beyond what is taught there. In this post I will try to talk about what is Health, Mental Health, Illness, Mental Illness, as its concepts to what we can identify in reality and its association with the social and cultural aspect.
The first thing that might come to mind when reading the word "Health" depending on the context of knowledge that the person possesses can imagine how an individual without any tangible physical ailment that others may consider "abnormal", others could imagine a healthy person with a lifestyle that is not harmful to your body, the ideal of a "healthy" person who exercises, another example would be people who exceed the average life span, but in the end these concepts beyond being valid or not, do not indicate how health works or manifests itself in an individual to what point it ceases to have it. For the WHO, the concept of health refers to a "harmonious" biological, psychological, social and environmental state of the human being that allows him to function in daily and productive life, a definition that tells us that to understand or assign something as health we must look at the different currents of thought and sciences that are involved in health in general, and at the same time how these factors are directly related to it. We could say then that health is multifactorial.
Now, referring to Mental Health, if we say that Health in general is a state of well-being in multiple factors that allows the productive functioning of the person, mental health would be that state of well-being but in the psychic area, but to give a more in-depth concept, we could say that mental health is the state where the person is aware of himself and his capabilities-limits, his environment and characteristics and those around him, which allow him to develop and adapt in the development of his life. Reinforcing this concept with that of the OMS:
"A state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own aptitudes, can cope with the normal pressures of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community" (p. 46).
These concepts indicate that mental health is also a construct influenced by multiple factors, it is logical that the complexity of human thought and behavior lies in the Biopsychosocial dynamics, in which human beings are composed. Now, it would not be correct to say that if we see a person with absence of disease or mental illness is a healthy person physically and mentally, since health does not depend on a single factor, but how could we identify that the person is really healthy? assuming that meets the ideal of a functional and productive individual if there are conditions that can affect it and generate a physical or mental ailment. Before breaking down these doubts raised, it would be good to review the concepts of disease and mental illness.
We could summarize mental illness and diseases as a set of symptoms and conditions of genetic origin, which maintain a supposed stability at the beginning of their diagnosis and evolution, and are not reactive to the social environment but are reactive to the administration of drugs. In the case of the psychic sphere, these symptoms significantly affect the mental and behavioral functionality of the individual, preventing him/her from developing with adaptability and productivity in his/her environment. Within medicine, psychiatry through psychopathology studies what is related to these mental affectations and psychology through clinical psychology, both study the dynamics and evolution of these psychic symptomatologies with a more intrinsic and individual approach.
But within the psychic ailments is a factor that depends on the influence of social and ecological environments where it develops, where their treatments are more of the psychotherapeutic amito that have greater reaction accompanied by psychotropic drugs, psychological disorders, can be defined as follows:
"Condition that impacts thinking, feelings, mood, and behavior. This can affect the ability to relate to others and the development of a normal life" (p.06).
Returning to the doubt raised, then, if we have an individual apparently with an absence of disease, but how could we determine if he is totally healthy if he depends on multiple factors that work independently and at the same time dependent on each other?
A person may experience in the development of his primary, juvenile and adult life different types of physical and psychological affectations that will make it impossible to be within a static mental health picture, but it does not mean that we are always sick. We could deduce that mental health, like physical health, is a transitory state, which is continuously affected by multiple factors that can reduce its permanence in the individual.
Something that would take a lot of work away from mental and medical health professionals are the cultures socialized in an extensive influence of elements that significantly affect the psychic state and consequently the physical state of individuals. If we refer to the fact that health depends on biopsychosocial factors, it could be said that the social factor is the main element on which the other variables that develop people depend. If we add the subjective factor that an Obsessive Compulsive in Latin America is not the same as a person with TOC in Europe, since they are two totally different regions in their concepts and lifestyles, where their culture is indicating them what they are living.
I would dare to say that this is more complex than it could be, since the government policies of a region or country that involve actions and laws that influence its population, depending on how this is developed, would affect the mental health of individuals, but policies are prioritized according to the culture that has already been standardized in that region. In other words, a social culture that is not psychoeducated in mental health will have a population that is unaware and uneducated in their own psychic wellbeing, the issue will remain a common thing for mental health professionals and not for the general population that needs it.
Well my people of this scientific community, so far the post on my part, it would be a lie to say that I am not nervous about the results of it, but at the same time one of the factors of learning and scientific knowledge is the feedback and sharing of opinions and corrections. So I will be happy to know your opinions and comments of what you thought, and any support you wish to give me, I will be very grateful.
FONSECA-PEDRERO, E. D. U. A. R. D. O., DEL CASAL, A. D. G., DE ALBÉNIZ, A. P., SEBASTIÁN-ENESCO, C. A. R. L. A., GÓMEZ, F. I., & TRENADO, M. P. 1. Introducción La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) (2013) define la salud mental como un estado de bienestar en el que la persona es consciente de sus propias capacidades y las desarrolla, es capaz de.
Petra, I. (2008). Concepto de salud mental y normalidad. Introducción a la Salud Mental, 46.
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Hoyo, D. E. H., Losardo, R. J., & Bianchi, R. I. (2021). Salud plena e integral: un concepto más amplio de salud. Revista de la Asociación Médica Argentina, 134(1).
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