Why Body and Mind well beings are important?
Good Body and mental health well beings are important to lives of all people and to the communities where they live. It is essential to achieve a healthy, resilient and thriving population. The skills and attributes associated with mental health wellbeing (e.g. self respect, confidence, resilience, tolerance, empathy, sense of meaning) influence a very wide range of outcomes. These include physical health, educational attainment, relationship, community safety, cohesion, and quality of life as well as quality of positive thought.
Enjoyment of the world around us, our families and friends, physical activities, appreciation of art music and spirituality can all contribute to good mental health and wellbeing. Mental health can be adversely affected by things like worries about money, stressful work, poor relationship, bullying and violence. Our mental wellbeing is also affected by whether or not we feel in control of our lives, feel safe, have good relationship with other people and feel involved with our community.
Benefits of wellbeing include reducing health risk behaviour (such as smoking) and reduced mortality. Populations with good mental wellbeing also have improved overall health, recover more rapidly, are admitted to hospital less frequently and have higher level of employment and productivity.
On the other hand, poor mental health is associated with higher rate of risk taking behaviour such as smoking which is the largest cause of premature death in the UK. Increased alcohol and drug misuse, lack of physical activity and unhealthy lifestyle such as unhealthy living and unhealthy eating, occur in higher rates in those with poor mental health.
What are mental health problems?
Mental health refers to depression and anxiety (which may also be referred to as common mental disorder) as well as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (also referred to as severe mental illness). Mental disorder includes mental illness but also covers conditions such as personality disorder, and alcohol and drug problems. These conditions are of considerable public health significance given the associated health and social care implication.
The impact of mental disorder
Mental health disorder is associated with higher rate of physical illness and premature death – those with depression die 10 years earlier, while those with schizophrenia die 20 years earlier. This is largely due to high risk of behaviour such as smoking, alcohol and drug misuse, lack of physical activity and poor diet which occur in response to emotional and stress related problems. Smoking is the largest cause of preventable death and 42% of adult tobacco consumption in England is by those with mental disorders. However those with mental disorders are less likely to be offered smoking cessation interventions.
Mental illness accounts for a great number of disability adjusted life years (a measure of overall burden of disease), than other major condition such as cancer, circulatory and respiratory diseases.
