Dr Mike Ramsay, Lecturer-Mental Health Nursing, University of Dundee talks about mental health and other aspects associated with it
While it is great that people want to discuss mental health and its associated issues, this is a complex area and trying to understand it through soundbites or through a single definition arguably does that complexity a disservice. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a stronger emphasis on people’s mental health and a deeper desire to understand the impact of social restrictions, isolation, and loss on the global population.
Mental health, and its related concepts of mental wellbeing and mental ill-health, do not exist in a vacuum. Sometimes our public dialogue uses these terms like they are one and the same, rather than teasing out the distinctive features of each of them. You can consider mental health and mental ill-health, sometimes referred to as distress or illness, as opposites or extremes. In our lives we journey back and forth (to varying degrees) and feel more or less at ease depending on what factors are at play in our lives. Even when we are faced with difficulties and feel a sense of mental unease, we may not be experiencing mental ill-health, but certainly may feel like our sense of mental wellbeing is challenged. For some, they will enter a period of experience that may be diagnostically characterised as mental ill-health and need specialist treatment and care. Just as with physical ill-health – such as heart disease, cancer or diabetes – mental ill-health can have varying effects on our wellbeing, both physically and mentally.
Our mental health, and thereby the value or quality we attach to it, are linked to our wider or global sense of health and wellbeing. Factors such as our physical health, exposure to emotional variations, psychological stressors (such as workload), financial worries, relationship issues, and our sense of social wellbeing and connectedness, plus our spiritual wellbeing and cultural context all come together to determine our sense of health and, thereby, our mental health. The Covid-19 pandemic has stretched all of these factors and add in enforced isolation, loss of social opportunities, missed or unreported new illness and atypical grieving in our increased incidence of loss and the complexities become more readily apparent. In this regard, concern for the mental health of nurses (including mental health nurses) assume greater importance with reports of the related concepts of compassion fatigue, moral distress and burnout rising in the face of pandemic pressures and themselves potential vectors in the development of mental ill-health for staff.
In some parts of the world there it has been suggested that we can quickly address mental health issues, with areas like mindfulness, resilience and other self-help strategies gaining prominence. The problem here lies with ‘quickly address’. Clarity on the nature, scope, effectiveness and definition of these ideas is sometimes lacking. Often mental distress cannot be quickly addressed or ‘fixed’ due to the complex interplay of factors that lead to it. Therefore, attempted positive action can easily become confused with measured, affirmative stances on what mental health and wellbeing are, and what we may do to sustain, act and care for our mental health and that of fellow citizens.
Public interest and attitudes about mental health are increasing, encouraging people to seek help or be proactive in talking about wellbeing issues. Friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours and networks of community organisations all have an important part to play in raising awareness and developing ‘mentally healthy communities’. Such communities hold the total well-being of the group and its members, including mental well-being, as of central importance to their functioning, be they schools, higher education institutions, recovery groups or workplaces. Asserting mental well-being in this way confers its importance in contemporary life and can assist in reducing stigma.
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