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Mental HealthMental health means generally accepting & liking oneself & adapting & coping w/emotions, challenges, & changes that are apart of everyday life Mental Health. Mental health can’t be taken for granted; it does NOT mean feeling happy all the time; nor does it mean always being in control, falling apart, feeling angry, afraid, or insecure. Being down, identifying, why, coping w/it, etc., strengthens one’s mental health.I. Your Mental Health: There are some general characteristics of good mental health. Keep in mind, NO one has every one of these characteristics all the time. A person w/good mental health is one who is:A. Feeling Good about Yourself – when you do, you have respect for yourself & others, take care of yourself, accept who are & others; you express your emotions in an appropriate manner; you enjoy your own company as well the company of others. When you make mistakes you’re not overwhelmed by them & learn from them.B. Feeling Comfortable w/Other People: Means allowing others to get close to you & you getting close to others; it means feeling free to be who you really are. It doesn’t mean never feeling angry, shy, or uncomfortable w/others. You make & maintain healthy friendships & try to change or end unhealthy ones.C. Meeting the Demands of Life: Means facing problems when they arise, being able to deal w/minor & major problems of life. It means NOT being paralyzed when problems are big, but working to try to solve them & dealing w/it if you cannot. You’re able to learn from problems.II. Self Esteem & Mental Health: Self esteem is directly related to your general level of wellness.A. Positive & Negative Feedback: feedbacks are messages we get from others that tell us how they feel about us. We receive both positive & negative feedback from many sources – parents, peers, co-workers, etc. The messages can be verbal or non verbal.1. Positive: Words of praise, “rewards,” etc. for actions, deeds, etc., that are done; encouragement when mistakes or failures occur. Not being unjust or abusive when corrections are needed.2. Negative: cues, words, etc. that tells you, you’ve “messed up” or done wrong. These can be beneficial but often neg. feedback be can abusive or harsh.What does self esteem have to do w/mental health? People who’ve received mostly positive feedback probably will have high self esteem & better mental health than a person who has received mostly neg. feedback.People who have received mostly neg. feedback will more likely to have lower self esteem.However, its never too late for such people to build their self esteem up; by spending time w/positive people, healthy relationships, etc. they can work towards doing so.Your Needs & PersonalityAll of us have basic needs; getting these met is essential to a person’s physical & mental health.A Hierarchy of Needs: Abraham Maslow presented human needs in the form of a pyramid. This is an hierarchy of needs – a ranked list of those things humans must have to survive & thrive. The most basic needs come 1st b/c we must meet these needs before we become aware of other needs. Physical Needs are the most basic & necessary for life: food, water, bed rest, & hygiene.Emotional Needs can have a huge effect on one’s mental & phys’l health; the need to love & be loved, to belong, to feel worthwhile is inherent in every human being. After our phys’l needs, most of our behavior is geared towards meeting our emotional needs.1. The Need to Be Loved: To give & feel loved in return is the most basic emotional need. Studies have shown that babies (& other higher animals) who are not picked up & talked to are stunted phys’ly, emotionally, & mentally.2. The Need to Belong: We are social beings; we need to be w/& interact w/people. When we’re mentally healthy, we meet these needs w/others in appropriate ways; when we’re not, we may isolate ourselves from others or become “too” attached to them.3. The Need to be Valued & Recognized: we need to have others recognize & value us as a person & individual & that we have worth. It is important to find healthy, positive ways to meet these for recognition; this is such a strong need that some people will inappropriately seek negative attention to get it. C. Aesthetic: means artistic; it means responding to or appreciating that which is beautiful. It includes our appreciation of beauty in many forms: nature, art, music, etc.D. Self Fulfilling Needs the need to strive for our full potential as a person; this is self-actualization. Defining & meeting this need is lifelong when the need is neither acknowledged nor met, depression, boredom, & other mental disorders can occur. In order to be fulfilled, people need not only to do what they’re capable of doing, but, do it as well as they can. II. Personality & Mental Health: Your personality is a complex set of characteristics that makes you unique & distinguishes you from everyone else. It encompasses all your traits, attitudes, feelings, etc. The following 3 main factors influence the development of your personality.A.Heredity is the first influence. One inherits certain basic traits, the most obvious being phys’l onesOne also inherits basic intellectual abilities. There is increasing evidence that heredity also plays an important role in your emotions & perhaps some of your behaviors.B. Environment: Includes all of your surroundings – family, neighborhood, where you grew up & where you live now, all of your experiences, etc. People who come from unhealthy environments may suffer from poor mental health, whereas those who are in healthful environments are more likely to reach out for help & support.C. Personal Behavior: Your behavior: the way YOU CHOOSE to act w/in your environment & w/ your capabilities. Many factors affect how you act. One major one are your values: those principles that have been instilled in you, or you have seen/learned from others, that guide you in making decisions & how you live. We develop them mainly from our family, but also from our faith, culture, school, society, etc.Personal behavior comes from one’s choices. Through our free will & choices we make ourselves to be the person we are & we are both responsible & accountable for those choices we make. These in turn affect our overall behavior & mental health. For eg.: if you value good health you will choose to practice good health habits.Understanding EmotionsI.Mixed Emotions: Being a teen is an especially emotional time; you get confusing signals from both inside & outside yourself. Various things can trigger all kinds of different emotional responses. Sometimes you (may) act on them before thinking your actions thru & the consequences that may occur.This is a time of growth & change in your body & mind. One cause of this change is due to hormones: chemicals produced in one part of the body, transported by the blood, to another part of the body. They cause both phys’l changes (such as growth) & emotional changes.II. Recognizing Your Emotions: - and handling them are 2 of the most important skills a person can learn: expressing emotions is learned. We learn how express them, how not to, & how we don’t want to, from watching others, our environment, & our own experiences.III. Handling Emotions in Healthy Ways: The way emotions are expressed differs from person to person & time to time. The way they are expressed can be good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate. If you learned inappropriate ways to express anger, you may express it inappropriately too. However, you choose to express in this way & you can choose & learn to express it in an appropriate way. A. Fears: Everyone has fears. It can be a rational or irrational emotion. As a rational one it keeps us from harm, danger, doing stupid things. Irrational fear is called a phobia. As w/all emotions, fear produces phys’l rxns in your body your nervous & hormonal system responds by preparing your body & emotions for necessary action.Eg. the flight or fight response. When confronted w/danger we (& other animals) will take flight from the danger or defend ourselves against it. In either response our bodies will produce chemicals to affect the response.When the danger is gone our bodies return to its normal state. Sometimes we like the response we have from fear; we enjoy scary movies or roller coasters. Psychologists believe that most fears are learned; some of the fears we have may have been instilled in us to help protect us. More often than not these have been helpful to us. However, other fears are not helpful: fears that immobilize us, that damage relationships, are not healthy.1. Healthful Ways to Deal w/Fear: It’s important to identify your fears & find someone you trust to share your fears with them. See p.40 major fears.****2. Anger: Is often thought of as a negative emotion, perhaps b/c anger is often expressed in negative or violent ways. However, anger is a normal emotion that everyone experiences. It’s learning how to express that anger in an healthful way that is a sign of emotional maturity & health.3. Healthful Ways to Express Anger: As in the case of other emotions, you must 1st recognize your feelings for what they are &, if possible the root or cause of them. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about what’s making you angry, but you can still find ways to cope & fxn w/the anger. Dealing w/your anger in a safe, appropriate, & constructive way helps you reduce the risk to act impulsively for which there may be consequences! Acting irrationally could be hurtful to you or someone else’s well being. See bullets p.41 What’s gained from expressing your feelings like anger in an appropriate way? One, you’ve identified the emotion & expressed it – it’s over, so you don’t carry the feeling around w/you. You’re more likely to carry on healthy relationships b/c instead of burying, ignoring, or exploding your anger its less likely to affect you & others.III. Decision Making & HealthBig Decision, Little Decision What is a Decision? A decision is an act of making a choice or coming to a solution. We make many decisions every day; some are minor. Others are very important b/c they may affect: Yours or someone else’s health & well being: Yours or some else’s future.Some big decision Teens face: DrinkingDrugs, Sex, Driving w/someone who’s been drinking, Staying in school, Smoking, Telling if being abused, Jobs B. Reasonable & Unreasonable Risks: A risk is a behavior w/an element of danger that may cause injury or harm. If you take a risk you expose yourself to these possible dangers. Some risks are unavoidable.1. Reasonable risks: the likelihood of getting hurt is low. 2. Unreasonable risks: are ones in which the likelihood of being harmed now or in the future is greatUnreasonable risks are often taken by those w/low self esteem Precautions are planned, preventive actions taken before an action to increase the chances of a safe outcome.C. Decision-Making Model: Is effective to use when faced w/having to make a major decisionThere are 5 basic stepsState the problem/issue that requires a decisionList possible choices in making a decisionConsider: consequences, values – family, religious, moral, legalMake a decision based on what you know & act on itEvaluate your decision A Decision to MakeHW: answer on loose-leak, due next class.Patrice is a senior in high school who’s working part time. Her grades are just below average. She does several school activities. After working for 6 months she has been asked to be night manager. With this promotion she’ll get a 20% raise. She will have to increase her work hours from 16 to 24 hrs/week.Should she take the promotion?Use each of the 5 steps to answer. IV. The Body-Mind Connection: phys’l & mental health are closely connected; emotions can greatly affect your phys’l well being. Strong emotions like anger can cause actual chemical changes to occur in your body: the heart beats faster, blood pressure rises, muscle tense. If you do not do something to deal w/your emotions, the body does not relax.Long term these can cause serious health issue Its unhealthy to keep emotions bottled up. This doesn’t mean one always expresses any emotion at anytime to make oneself feel better. It means learning constructive ways to deal & cope w/them. If negative patterns develop they could follow you thru-out life. The longer you have them the harder it’ll be to change them.See bullets p.41V. Improving Your Mental Health: there will be times when our emotions may get the better of us; you may feel overwhelmed, frustrated, hostile, or depressed; however, there are steps that can make you feel better & improve your coping skills. It’s not what happens to a person that define them but how they react to what happens to them. Its their choice See bullets p. 43; HW p.43 2&3*** End For Exam *** ................
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