October is
Mental Health
Awareness
Month
When coping with a life threatening illness, or being the loved one of someone in palliative care, mental health supports can be vital. It's important to get help if you or someone you know is going through a crisis, and help is available from a wide variety of sources. Everyone's mental health is important, a crucial part of our own wellness and the wellbeing of those around us. Mental health is something that needs to be actively cared for of in order to make sure you stay healthy overall and can cope with the difficulties life can bring. We all need to make sure we take care of our mental health in the same way we would take care of physical health. This is something that takes practice, patience, support, and time. It is also important to remember that while mental health and mental illness are often used interchangeably, they are not the same thing.
You can maintain and improve your mental health in a number of ways. From the Government of Canada Mental Health Resources:
Know and accept that life can be challenging.
Know and accept your strengths and weaknesses.
Set realistic goals for yourself.
Accept yourself and others. This is the basis of self-esteem.
Learn to recognize and understand that you and others have both positive and negative feelings. Create a sense of meaning in your life by learning and trying new activities, like starting a hobby. Create healthy, trusting relationships with people who accept and support you. Building a supportive community is also an important way to improve mental health, and allows you to increase coping skills, resiliency, and find strength in important interpersonal relationships.
From the Canadian Mental Health Association:
“Mental health” is a concept similar to “physical health”: it refers to a state of well-being. Mental health includes our emotions, feelings of connection to others, our thoughts and feelings, and being able to manage life’s highs and lows. The presence or absence of a mental illness is not a predictor of mental health; someone without a mental illness could have poor mental health, just as a person with a mental illness could have excellent mental health.
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