We All Have Mental Health

"They have 'mental health'."

We've all heard it - where the term 'mental health' is associated with blame and shame.

The stigma can be so hard to shake - not only is the mention of mental health equated with 'mental health struggles' or 'mental illness' - but the tone carries this heavy negative connotation.

But the truth is everyone 'has mental health', just like we all have physical health to tend to.

Any one of us can have seasons where our mental health is flourishing, or languishing. We can feel positive about our mental well-being, or we can be struggling.

Things get trickier though when our struggle becomes long enough, or intense enough, to be considered ill-health - or mental illness. Mental illness symptoms can be acute enough to effect our daily functioning, and help can be asked for - just like physical illness, mental illness requires relevant intervention for a person to recover.

But even in the midst of experiencing illness, we can still have good days and hard days.

For example, even when a person experiences the illness of depression or anxiety, their mental health might be considered as flourishing or languishing.

We might be experiencing serious mental illness yet be navigating life in a way that can be described as flourishing as we live with the ongoing illness.

Or we might have no mental illness symptoms, and be living through a moment or season of languishing.

Someone with a serious mental illness can have a good day or a harder day.

Someone with no mental illness symptoms can have a good day or a harder day.

Navigating mental health and mental illness is often not linear, its integrated.

This complexity need not discourage us though. It can help us understand when caring for our person that it takes more than one isolated incident or interaction to determine the ultimate outcome of care.

The road to recovery from mental illness might still be in the right direction - even on a hard day.

And a harder mental health day may not necessarily be an indicator of illness.

A shift in thinking regarding mental health from linear to integrated can make a huge difference in how we care.