May is Mental Health Month: Pathways to Wellness, Essential to Leading Full and Productive Lives

Pathways to Wellness, this year's theme for "May is Mental Health Month," calls attention to strategies and approaches that help people achieve wellness and good mental and overall health.

Wellness is essential to leading a full and productive life. It involves a set of skills and strategies to prevent the onset or shorten the duration of illness and promote recovery and wellbeing. It's about keeping healthy as well as getting healthy. More than absence of disease, wellness involves complete general, mental and social wellbeing. The fact is our overall wellbeing is tied to the balance that exists between our emotional, physical, spiritual and mental health.

Everyone is at risk for stress given the demands wellness brings in addition to challenges at work and at home. There are steps though that maintain wellbeing and help achieve wellness, including eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, having sense of self-worth, developing coping skills that promote resiliency, being emotionally aware and maintaining connections to family, friends and the community. These steps should be complemented with regular mental health checkups to take stock of one's wellbeing.

Just as we check our blood pressure and get cancer screenings, it's a good idea to take periodic stock of our emotional wellbeing. A recent study suggested everyone get their mental health checked as often as they get a physical, and many doctors routinely screen for mental health by asking a series of questions about lifestyle, eating and drinking habits and mental wellness. There are also online screening tools you can use. While conditions like depression are common (about one in five Americans has a mental health condition), they are extremely treatable.

Fully embracing the concept of wellness not only improves health in the mind, body and spirit, but also maximizes one's potential to lead a fulfilling life. Using strategies that promote resiliency, strengthen mental health and prevent mental health and substance use conditions leads to improved general health and a healthier society: greater academic achievement by our children, a more productive economy and families that stay together. It's why pathways to wellness are so important and why we need to spread the word.

"May is Mental Health Month" was started 64 years ago by Mental Health America to raise awareness about mental health conditions and the importance of mental wellness for everyone.

To learn more about mental health resources on campus, visit the UAA-ISPI website.

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