May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This international celebration has been celebrated since 1949. Mental Health Month was created to increase awareness of the importance of mental health and wellness in Americans’ lives, and to celebrate recovery from mental illness. Mental health is essential for a person’s overall health. Therefore, this can help break the stigma and provide support for those struggling with mental disorders or just struggling with their mental health.

What is mental health? And why is it so important? 

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act, and helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.

Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. Over the course of your life, if you experience mental health problems, your thinking, mood, and therefore behavior could be affected.

So, what are ways to help better or mental health and/ or increase our overall mood for a better life?

Therapy:

Therapy can help you manage life’s varied challenges and live a more fulfilled life. It can help you understand what you’re feeling, why and how to cope. Just like visiting your doctor for regular wellness exams, or your dentist for checkups, meeting with a therapist can help keep your mental health in order.

Journaling:

Journaling helps control your symptoms and improve your mood by:

• Helping you prioritize problems, fears, and concerns.
• Tracking any symptoms day-to-day so that you can recognize triggers and learn ways to better control them.
• Providing an opportunity for positive self-talk and identifying negative thoughts and behaviors.

Get enough sleep:

Good sleep improves your brain performance, mood and overall health. Consistently poor sleep is associated with anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions.

Exercise:

Exercise improves mental health by reducing anxiety, depression, and negative mood and by improving self-esteem and cognitive function. Exercise has also been found to alleviate symptoms such as low self-esteem and social withdrawal.

Practice Gratitude:

Research has shown that consciously practicing gratitude can reduce feelings of stress and anxiety. In fact, studies have found that a single act of thoughtful gratitude produces an immediate 10% increase in happiness, and a 35% reduction in depressive symptoms.

Go for a walk:

I know we all don’t have time to go to the gym every day, but walking is just as beneficial for our mental health, cardiovascular health and over all well-being.

Walking reduced stress and anxiety.

Endorphins are known to not only boost our mood but also to lower our stress levels. Being physically active helps lower the risk of clinical depression and spending more time in nature can also help to quiet the mind.

Spend time with family and friends: 

Socializing not only staves off feelings of loneliness, but also it helps sharpen memory and cognitive skills, increases your sense of happiness and well-being, and may even help you live longer. As humans we crave societal connections and emotional intimacies. It is important that when our mental health starts depleting to not give into wanting to isolate, but rather it is a more prominent time to seek companionship.

But most important thing to practice is…. Giving yourself grace. It is okay to not be okay. Help is available and you are not alone.

Joshleyn Soto 
Psychologist student 
Assistant to psychotherapist 
@ 305 counseling / Dr. Yaz Marimon 
Assistant at FIU MINT anxiety lab