MENTAL HYGIENE: WHAT IT IS AND 10 TIPS TO HAVE IT - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025

The mental health is a concept used to define the set of activities that allow a person to have mental health and be in equilibrium with its sociocultural environment. Behaviors that encompass mental hygiene are intended to prevent negative behaviors in the social context. Likewise, they intend to provide emotional stability and increase people's quality of life.

According to this construct of psychology, each person has individual control over their functioning, which allows them to regulate their state of integration and well-being. Being in harmony with the sociocultural environment is an essential task for the well-being of everyone. However, elements and obstacles often appear that can complicate its achievement.

The concept of mental hygiene defends the capacity and autonomy of each individual to achieve these objectives. In this way, the barriers that can make it difficult to balance with the sociocultural environment remain in the background.

Everyone has the ability to find the behaviors that provide well-being and to carry them out. The individuals who achieve it, little by little, build a rewarding reality for themselves.

However, not carrying out mental hygiene behaviors, as well as carrying out harmful or harmful behaviors, can put the quality of life of the person in question.

In this sense, mental hygiene configures all the elements that a subject has to develop to be in harmony. Carrying out such actions will have a direct beneficial effect on the person, and on the socio-cultural relationships that surround him.

Do you want to know what behaviors are essential when it comes to achieving balance and harmony with the environment? Below I expose the 10 activities that stand as main in the achievement of mental hygiene.

Tips for achieving mental hygiene

1- Satisfaction of basic needs

Basic or physiological needs are at the base of Maslow's pyramid

The first step in developing mental hygiene lies in meeting basic needs. It is about finding a balance between those most basic needs and the behaviors we perform.

Eat a satisfactory diet, get adequate rest, have sex when we need it… All these activities satisfy a biological need. When they are repressed, both our physical state and our emotional state are destabilized.

In this way, the first requirement that must be taken into account when reaching a state of total harmony is to achieve an adequate internal balance.

Do not try to eat a very strict diet that causes you discomfort to lose weight. Don't reduce your hours of sleep excessively to increase your activity. Don't constantly suppress your sexual needs.

These actions are carried out very frequently in our society. However, the result that is achieved is a personal imbalance. Try to harmonize these basic aspects, with the aim that they do not diminish your quality of life.

2- Caring for self-esteem

Meeting basic needs will bring you a modicum of balance, but will not ensure that you are okay with yourself. In fact, to be able to achieve it, you have to accept yourself as you are, like yourself and, above all, love yourself.

This aspect is highly important because if you do not love yourself, it will be difficult for you to love others. In the same way, if one is not good with himself, it will be difficult for him to be in balance with his socio-cultural environment.

Building self-esteem is not about believing that you are the best, that no one does things as well as yourself, or that you have better skills than the rest. Self-esteem is not a comparative concept. So, caring for self-esteem is about loving yourself. Accept and value what you are.

If the first step of loving yourself is not done by yourself, rarely will others. In the same way that if the first person you love is not yourself, you will hardly have the capacity to love others.

These factors show the very high relevance of self-esteem for the achievement of mental hygiene. In order to be good with others, you first need to be good with yourself.

3- Positive assessment of others

Once a positive assessment of oneself has been made and self-esteem has been enhanced, it is necessary to positively value others as well. If the people around you are negatively valued, relationships will be affected and little by little they will deteriorate.

Stop to think. Why do you maintain a relationship with each of the people who make up your social circle? What is the reason why you share different aspects of your lives?

Surely if you ask yourself these questions you will get very varied answers for each of the individuals. In addition, you will realize that each of the people in your social environment are present because they contribute something positive in your life. And surely you bring something positive in his.

In this way, making positive evaluations about others will allow you to improve the image you have about them, and facilitate the relationship. However, when negative evaluations are made, the relationship distances itself, its quality worsens, and this can become harmful.

The fact of valuing others positively does not mean that they have to be idolized or that everything they do has to be rewarded. But it does imply greater attention to the positive than to the negative of the people we appreciate.

4- Care for social relationships

On the other hand, we not only have to take care of the image we have about the people around us, but we also have to work so that the relationship is satisfactory.

In fact, those relationships that are not cared for end up dying or even end up being harmful. In the same way that you maintain a relationship because it contributes to you, the other person maintains it because it contributes to it.

Personal and social relationships are always two-way. That is, you have a relationship because in it we can give and receive. It is very important to keep personal relationships in mind and dedicate time and effort to make them work properly.

Performing this task allows you to maintain a satisfactory social circle and, furthermore, it constitutes one of the main sources of personal gratification.

5- Proper management of emotions

The 6 basic emotions of the human being

The management of emotions implies the development of self-control, in such a way that we acquire the ability to modulate the sensations we experience. When you get carried away by your emotions and don't have the ability to manage them, you usually don't end up making the best decision for your interests.

Learning to manage emotions does not imply eliminating them, nor stop taking them into account for our functioning. In fact, there are times when it is beneficial or even necessary to use them to act correctly.

However, there are many other times when it is important to limit its intensity and prevent negative emotions from overflowing. Without emotion management, bad behavior is likely to occur on many occasions, and this can take its toll on both a personal and relational level.

Thus, exercising the insertion of reason every time an emotion appears, to assess how it should be managed, is a vital process of mental hygiene.

6- Coping with situations

Despite the fact that all those actions that lead to a state of personal and social harmony are carried out, complicated situations can appear easily.

In fact, the appearance of complications is a situation that in many cases cannot be controlled. In those moments, the coping model that is applied acquires great importance.

Each situation requires different coping, even multiple coping styles may be appropriate in the same situation. However, what is unquestionable is that coping, whatever it may be, is essential in complex situations.

People need to take a leading role in their lives. If problems are not addressed, discomfort often multiplies and personal balance can be jeopardized.

7- positive thinking

Often the situations and events that occur cannot be changed. But what can always be managed is what we think about what happened.

Negative thoughts usually appear automatically, and cannot be avoided. However, you can decide how long you want to extend.

In order to be emotionally well, people need positive thoughts to encompass most of their cognition. When this does not happen, negative feelings appear that lead to a state of discomfort.

In this way, it is important to promote positive thoughts as much as possible and, above all, to ensure that negative thoughts do not acquire a main role.

In any situation, no matter how bad, you can always develop positive thinking.

This is the goal of every person who wants to be good with himself and with others. Try to make negative things affect as little as possible and always find a positive aspect that allows them to improve or mitigate them.

8- Establishment of objectives

People need to have goals in their life. Without them, you can fall into monotony and the illusion can gradually disappear.

Living in a happy and motivated way without illusion is a practically impossible task to achieve. For this reason, it is vital to continually set new goals.

Goals can cover any aspect of an individual's life. Whether it is work, personal, social, relational…

In this way, you can continually set new goals in your life, regardless of their qualities or characteristics. It is important that the objectives you set meet two essential requirements.

First of all, it has to bring you something positive, that is, its achievement has to convey some kind of gratification or satisfactory feeling. Otherwise, the objective will be indifferent to you and will not fulfill its motivating function.

Second, it is important that the goal is rationally achievable. Imagining goals in an abstract way or with components that are interpreted as unattainable will automatically distance you from them, and they will not provide you with motivation in your day-to-day life.

9- Pleasant activities

Personal satisfaction must not only be obtained from oneself and from the functioning that one carries out, but it can and must also be obtained from external stimuli.

Surely there are many activities that give you gratification simply by doing them. Likewise, surely there are many elements that can cause you satisfaction.

It can be very pleasant for a person to go to the movies on Saturday afternoons, meet friends for dinner, or go on excursions on Sunday. On the other hand, it can be very gratifying for someone else to buy a new book or go for a run every day.

It is important that you know what activities are pleasant for you and do not deprive yourself of them. Often a bad day, a worry or a situation that causes you discomfort can stop affecting you by having a good time.

In other cases, doing these activities can be your source of motivation to do other less rewarding tasks.

In any case, pleasant activities play a major role in achieving a good emotional state and an optimal quality of life.

10- Physical activity

Finally, physical exercise is one of the activities that originate the greatest well-being. In addition, they provide gratification in a direct way.

Multiple studies have shown how physical activity is highly beneficial in improving mood, reducing tension and anxiety, promoting self-esteem and improving quality of life.

All these aspects are essential to achieve mental hygiene, so physical activity is one of the most useful tools to obtain well-being and personal balance.

References

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2. Bühler, Ch. (1967). Mental Hygiene of the Child. Buenos Aires: Pidós.
3. Dávila, H. (1994) Mental Health. Diffusion in Research. Ministry of Human Development National Secretary of Health. P. 7, 11-15.
4. Holland, JL. 1973. Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
5. Karasek, R, T Theorell. 1990. Healthy Work. London: Basic Works.