Mental health is a term thrown about a lot -- true particularly over the last few decades -- but the full meaning of mental health is typically overlooked. When casual discussions of mental health occur, the focus is often on serious mental disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, sociopathic behavior, and even Alzheimer's. What's left out in such conversations is that mental health is a factor is all of our lives: every one of us.



The emphasis when considering mental health is usually about disorder. The presence of a condition means a person is mentally unwell;lacking a condition means mental health is in order. A couple of problems exist with thinking this way. The first is that many people who actually do have mental disorders don't get diagnosed. There are scores of undiagnosed mentally ill in the world.

Secondly, optimal mental health isn't only the absence of a mental condition, or the presentation of symptoms. Mental health isn't solely about not having: it's just as equally about having.

Optimal mental health means being successfully able to cope with life setbacks; having productive and healthy interactions with family members and friends; having, at the very least, functional relationships with co-workers and other informal acquaintances; and being able to successfully acclimate to society. These are elements that can certainly be lacking in someone without any sort of identifiable mental or emotional illness.

In the event that one does lack these coping and social interaction capabilities, would they be considered mentally ill? Very unlikely under current definitions. But perhaps current definitions should be changed. An argument could be made that the lack of coping or interaction skills does, in fact, indicate mental illness, particularly when acting out, or the use of drugs or alcohol, is a response to poor coping. Habitually angry or addicted people don't typically fall under the label of mentally ill. Were this to change, large numbers of people might be encouraged to get some form of mental health care.

The counter to opening up definitions of mental illness to include typical dysfunctions, and encouraging more mental health treatment in the process, is that it would be overkill, would be intrusive, would be comparable to medicating large segments of the population at large. But is this really true? Mental health doesn't have to be oppressive or medicating. This isn't some sort of suggestion that pharmaceuticals should be dispensed in greater quantities than they already are.

At its core, mental health treatment, should teach coping techniques, which is not the same as changing someone's reality. Keep the reality -- change the inappropriate coping strategies. This sort of an approach doesn't have to involve any kind of pharmaceutical treatment. The treatment of mental health has an extensive history, much of it having nothing to do with pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals aren't necessary to treat basic psychological or emotional function. Let's get this truth into open space, where it belongs.