Written By: Tiffany Bartell, Healthy Minds QEP Director
With the start of another school year, one of the most important questions you can ask yourself is, “How’s my mental health?” According to the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology, the definition of mental health is “a state of mind characterized by emotional well-being, good behavioral adjustment, relative freedom from anxiety and disabling symptoms, and a capacity to establish constructive relationships and cope with the ordinary demands and stresses of life.”
To summarize, good mental health allows you to be in college and make adjustments in your daily health habits, engage in learning and create meaningful relationships. If you are reading the definition and feeling like you are not hitting all these points of health the way that you would like to, here are a few tips for what to do.
First, remember that the three pillars of mental health are sleep, nutrition and exercise. When you are creating your weekly schedule, make sure that you include sleep, eating and some kind of healthy movement before adding all the other activities you want to accomplish.
Your brain is what governs your feelings and thoughts, but it is also where learning and memory take place. You need to have a healthy body — and your brain is part of your body — in order to learn and achieve your academic goals. Take care of your physical health, and you will be taking care of your brain health.
Next, prioritize making new friends and staying connected with healthy existing relationships. If you have come to Southern with friends from high school, challenge yourself to balance connecting with your friends and making new relationships and friendships. (Stay tuned for a future article on how to balance levels of friendships and have solid friendship hygiene!)
Remember that feelings of loneliness are your brain’s way of letting you know that you need to have connection and you’ve been alone too long — just like hunger tells you when it’s time to eat. Loneliness tells you that it’s time to connect. The connection that creates belonging and alleviates loneliness involves both receiving and giving support. It can be surprising how much it boosts your mood to give support to someone else who is having a rough day.
During Mental Wellness Week, we learned about how physical health, emotional health, cognitive health, social health and spiritual health are important to overall mental health. Making a practice of checking in with yourself at the end of every week to see how you feel, what went well and what might need a tweak is a great way to create a flexible structure that can support your mental health throughout the school year.
Every week we will write an article for this mental health column, and we’d love to hear from you on which topics you are most interested in. You can send topic ideas and questions to us at tkbartell@southern.edu or message us on Instagram (@saucounseling). As you move into the weekend, why don’t you pick one activity to try to take care of your mental health?