hey there everybody and welcome to this presentation on what is mental health
i'm your host dr donnelly snipes and this is the first video of mental health awareness month 2022
what is mental health well we need to know what mental health is to know what mental
ill health is mental health is our ability to have motivation to engage in life if you don't have the
motivation to get up off the sofa then it's going to be difficult to
have a rich and meaningful life if you don't have the motivation to do things that are in your best
interest like get adequate sleep and exercise and get good nutrition and you know a bunch of
stuff that we're going to talk about throughout the month then that may indicate that you have
a mental health issue when you've got motivation to engage in behaviors that help move you toward
your rich and meaningful life as you define it that is an indication of mental health when you
have the ability to control your behaviors you're not reacting too impulsively likewise you're not
just sitting there and not reacting that is a good indication of mental health people who are
angry or anxious they may act or react from a place of threat so a lot of times they may be
reacting more impulsively more irritably to things that happen and that prevents them
from having the opportunity to think and decide how do i want to react or how do i want to act
so instead of acting intentionally they're reacting automatically likewise when people
are depressed they don't have enough motivation to get up they don't have the energy to engage
in certain behaviors then they may not even react to a situation that's presented before them
people with good mental health are able to act in response to whatever happens in their environment
in a way that will help them move closer to what's important in their rich and meaningful life
people with good mental health can experience a manageable range of emotions now what do i mean
by that all emotions whether you like it or not all emotions have a function anger and anxiety
those are labels that we assign to the chemical cocktail that occurs when we experience a threat
anger and anxiety are there to protect you now in a lot of people who have mental ill health
their anger and anxiety warning system has gotten too sensitive too hyperactive so they have a lot
of false alarms and they experience more anger and anxiety to a much greater degree so instead
of reacting to something with a level 3 or a level 4 they react with a level eight or a level nine
and that can indicate a problem so a manageable range of emotions is being able to experience
a situation and react with an emotion but with an emotion to the appropriate
intensity and one that feels manageable it doesn't feel completely overwhelming
but you want to be able to experience i know maybe you don't think you do but since anger and anxiety
are designed to help protect you you want to be able to experience those at the right time
to the right degree you want to be able to experience curiosity and happiness and love
and joy and you know the list goes on all of our emotions are important to giving us
a rich life when you look at somebody who doesn't experience a wide range of emotions
their perspective on life is often relatively flat we want to have dimension in our life
people with good mental health are able to tolerate distress yeah i know goes back to that
whole anger and anxiety thing none of us likes to feel anxious or angry or in in pain or depressed
or grieving but it happens and people with good mental health are able to acknowledge mindfully
acknowledge what they're feeling and sit with it without being afraid that it's going to completely
overwhelm or consume them they can tolerate that distress now there are going to be times
where you may encounter a crisis where it does feel overwhelming it's a grief
or some sort of trauma that doesn't mean that you're not tolerating your distress people who are
tolerating distress in unusual circumstances may have to reach out for help tolerating distress
doesn't necessarily mean doing it by yourself but tolerating distress means acknowledging
that hey i can feel this feeling as unpleasant as it is i can feel this feeling and i can get
through it now different than distress is coping with the stress tolerating distress is sitting
with that feeling and being able to feel like you can exist and get through it it's not necessarily
changing the situation in dialectical behavior therapy linehan talks about how
when we experience distress we trigger that fight-or-flight reaction that emotional
dysregulation and our brain is just flooded with stress chemicals when we are trying to
tread through those stress chemicals we are not thinking clearly it is not possible to think as
clearly and objectively as we can when our brain is bathed in cortisol and adrenaline
it just ain't possible so distress tolerance helps us sit with the emotion not make it
worse by thinking oh my gosh i'm going to be consumed helps us tolerate it until we
can get into what lenahan calls our wise mind once we're in our wise mind once we are not
trying to tread water in that swimming pool of stress emotions then we can start exploring how
can i cope with this situation people with good mental health have a variety of coping strategies
they can use because not every situation is going to respond to the same technique just like not
every you know problem not every nail requires a hammer okay i'm gonna mess up that metaphor but
you see what i'm saying we need to have a variety of tools to help us cope with the situation
and coping can mean a variety of things it may change mean changing the situation if
you don't like it what can you do to change it what can you do to improve the next moment
it may be changing your reaction to the situation maybe it's something you can't change my daughter
was a couple of years ago diagnosed with a chronic illness and i don't like that as a mother it makes
me very unhappy to see her struggling sometimes when she has flare-ups but i can't change
that situation there are things i can do to be supportive of her but i have to change my reaction
to that situation and instead of being angry that she's got a chronic condition being curious about
okay use that energy to being curious to finding out what can i do to best support her and help her
when she is having a flare-up and how can i help her between flare-ups prevent flare-ups what can
i do to be supportive so instead of changing the situation because i can't fix that i can change
my reaction and how i use my energy towards that situation and there are other times we cope with
situations by simply deciding you know what that ain't worth my energy feeding the trolls online
that ain't worth my energy when i to cope with that situation i can choose to get embroiled in a
back and forth with a troll but that doesn't do any good for me and in fact it probably rewards
that behavior instead i can cope by saying you know what i only have so much energy and
dealing with this situation is not worth it i'm not gonna spend my energy on this when
i could spend it over here on things that will help me move toward my rich and meaningful life
people with good mental health are able to think clearly many issues that involve
mental ill health involve disruption of your circadian rhythms or your sleep which
cause your brain to be unable to get rid of all of the adenosine i've talked before about our
body factory and at night when we sleep is akin to in a factory when the cleaning crew goes through
and empties all the trash and gets rid of all the debris and stuff
from the day so the next morning when the workers come in they have a clear workspace and it they're
more efficient at doing their jobs adenosine is akin to all of that garbage and buildup
and at night your brain clears out the adenosine when you go into deep sleep but you have to go
into that phase of adequate deep sleep in order to clear out all of the adenosine
when the adenosine doesn't get cleared you feel foggy the next morning you feel kind of
groggy-headed now not that i'm advocating for it caffeine can help displace some of that adenosine
but it doesn't do everything and it's certainly not a long-term solution to thinking clearly
when we have difficulty thinking clearly we have difficulty learning and remembering things
think about the difference between when you are well rested and moderately happy
versus when you are exhausted and distressed
how effective are you at remembering things in each of those situations i know for me
when i am well rested and i'm feeling relatively happy i'm not stressed about something and
ruminating on it then i'm able to remember things a whole lot easier i can walk into the kitchen
and actually remember what i went there for imagine that so people with good mental health
are able to focus their attention long enough to learn to commit things from short-term to
long-term memory and to remember things their brain is not focused on fight or flee their brain
is actually able to devote attention and resources to learning and memory how awesome is that
and i know i keep talking about the brain because mental health is not just thoughts
or feelings it's about how that organ our brain is actually functioning and how