Mental health overview
Mental health and emotional wellbeing
Mental health is a state of mind and how you feel emotionally. It focuses on how you think, feel and behave. Having good mental health helps us to manage problems, cope with difficult situations and enjoy life.
Emotional wellbeing is being active, learning, involving in employment, volunteering, and other daily activities. There are ‘5 Ways to Wellbeing' which can help to improve your mental health. These are:
- Connect with the people around you, with friends, with your community
- Be active go for a walk, play a game, dance, stretch
- Take notice of the things around you
- Keep learning try something new, set a challenge, get back into something you enjoy
- Join a group, help someone out, volunteer your time
Mental health problems
Mental health problems can affect daily life. It can affect anyone at any time and mental health problems can impact on all aspects of a person's life and differ from person to person.
Sometimes, we experience situations which we find difficult to cope with or we find it difficult to keep up with everyday life. This can lead to feeling stressed, worried or low. These are all indicators of common mental health problems. If you are experiencing mental health problems, you are not alone. Problems such as stress, anxiety and depression are very common and can have a large impact upon your life.
Changes in your lifestyle, thinking and behaviour can help to manage anxiety and depression and self-help techniques could assist you in improving how you feel.
Support and treatment services have been developed under the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme which are designed to provide extra help and support to manage anxiety and depression.
Long term and severe mental health problems are less common, however they still affect a lot people. This might include hearing or seeing things that are not there, changes in how you think (for example being concerned that other people are out to get you) or extreme changes in mood. Often, other people may notice these signs before you notice yourself.
People experiencing these types of symptoms may need specialist services or support. This might be in the form of therapy, medication or both. Some people learn to manage these symptoms well by themselves.
If someone you know has a mental health problem, there are lots of things that you can do to help and support them. Being someone to talk to can be the most important thing that you offer, in other situations, you might be able provide more practical support such as undertaking an activity together.
If you are worried about someone you know or care for, or you are concerned about your own mental health you can contact the Emergency Duty Team.
This page was last updated on 22 August 2011
