Mental health is the basis of our Human Experience. Our mind has evolved over these millions of years, as a species we have seen the times of Dinosaur & their extinctions, abundance, scarcity, long periods of conflict and war and equal or longer period of peace and harmony. As a species we have witnessed so much more than so many other species, all of this made our brain to adapt, prime and readjust for such changes. Some changes have been quite drastic and some have ben quite subtle, but change has been the only constant so far.
All these changes have lead us to evolve over the centuries, some parts of the world has seen more than others in different times, but overall, the world has seen what the world has seen. Since last couple of decades, specially after the end of WW II we have never had a period of such overall quietness in brute conflicts. We started building the world from scratch, from the rubbles to the swanky buildings. Human as a species started owning upto the task of building a global society, separated by nation boundaries yet be super connected through establishment of global institutions.
This sense of self belief cemented through realisation that we as a Human race needs to do more and be more started the idea of economic growth for all. Delis started increasing in numbers, the supermarkets started building up, mega marts started coming up and did the whole hunting for food an ancient so far as a medieval concept. All of this brought prosperity of basic living, at the least, to whoever chose to participate in the new world economy.
All being said, our brain got tangled in the paradox of its own evolved state, the daily struggle for a lot of people went away, no longer it had to worry about hunting food everyday. The farms started to provide for what was needed, the farms including the farms for grains, fruits and other things including the livestocks. The Brian which wired itself over the years in the constant struggle for basic survival was then set to face something which was unprecedented for this long time, Peace.
Brain starts to act against itself, so much of daily chores were taken away from it and many options, choices were being presented. Hope, positivity for future was put on the table and the brain which evolved to help survive this body became a lethargic carrier of action oriented life. The work life became mundane, no longer it was presented with as many uncertainties as it got used to over the million of years, physical labour was taken away for most part and most of the areas were assisted through motors and machines, for a lot of people sitting at one place and only starting and typing, clicking and scrolling became the labour. Staying relatively at the same place, doing repetitive chores and performing rituals in the same order with the same outcome became so counter intuitive to the wiring of the brain.
With nothing to do with what it used to do coupled with so many new distractions and a new wave and a new kind of dominance and mind space struggle for things which aren’t tangible for most parts, started to bring about change that is never experienced by our brain. Thus, with a small set of what has been presented so far and with a lot more that could be written it is clear that the way things were and the way things currently are presents a major dilemma for our brain. Mind is the superset with a basic essential unit as brain.
Mind, thus, becomes hyper charged and gets heated, figuratively, in such lack of action oriented life, it thus presents itself with symptoms which are anxiety, fearfulness of unknown which was a blessing once upon a time to survive and when these symptoms spiral out of control, it gets into a different dark place, a state, called as depression. Depression is many things to many people yet there are some common grounds that most people diagnosed with depression do agree on. Some of such agreements include feeling of sadness for most of the time, unknown fearfulness, numbness, finding corners comforting to being with then going into a state of meltdown, sleep disturbances, mind buzzing etc.
Mental health, therefore, takes an importance equal to that of Physical health. What helps and what doesn’t could be googled and you’ll get a thousand best authors of mental health writing spelling out a thousand things that you could do. One thing that everyone does agree on though is the fact that while our brain adjusts to todays way of things, we need to keep action as a centre piece to solving the mental health problems.
Mental health shouldn’t be looked upon with a frowning face, it should be looked at as you’d look at the way you’d look at the Physical health aspect. The combination of Physical Health combined with disciplined rituals of mental strength training will bring about the change if you feel the unrest and it’d help you set your state as is or better through regular practice. Mental health improvement is in some ways similar to that of Physical health.
It takes patience, belief, faith and a lot of physical action to get started on the journey of improving your mental health. The first step towards this goal is to acknowledge that there is a need for such an improvement and then act on it through proper research and through seeking outs much help as needed.