Written by- Bhoomika Choraria
What is mental health? I’ve always heard people talk about having disorders and feeling down, but people never actually talk about mental health as a whole. Mental health is a spectrum, it’s never just good or bad, there are levels and stages. Everything around us affects our level on the spectrum, it can be the music we listen to, the shows we watch, the people we surround ourselves with. Understanding our place on the spectrum is imperative to make our minds a better and safer space for us. Everyone falls somewhere on this spectrum, and where we fall can continue to change over time. So today, we should start by understanding what the mental health spectrum actually is. Contrary to popular belief, our mental state isn’t just psychological, it’s physical, emotional and social as well. Our mental state affects the way we see ourselves, how we feel, even how we view the rest of the world. Imagine a thermometer, there’s multiple different temperatures along a line, a mental health spectrum is somewhat similar. To make it easier, I’ll divide it into four parts, green being the best and red being the worst. The green zone is a state of mental wellness, to be clear mental wellness doesn’t mean being completely free of stress or worry, but it means coping well with them and being at peace with yourself. A person in the green zone functions normally in terms of sleep, appetite, nutrition, physical health and personal relationships. The yellow zone would mean being in an unsettled state of mind. This is when a person may stress more and their negative thoughts may be more than usual, people in the yellow zone may have trouble focusing on tasks and may experience changes in their sleeping and eating patterns. The orange zone means having a hard time coping with daily life, people in this zone can experience trouble in concentration, being more exhausted than usual and can experience moods so low that it seems hard to do even simple tasks. Lastly, we have the red zone. The red zone is the crisis zone, a person in the red zone can experience severe anxiety, depression as well as having thoughts about self harm or suicide, people can struggle to eat, sleep or even get out of bed. The red zone is a warning sign, and you would usually benefit from talking to a therapist or a professional.
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