Why it is important to take care of mental health: 5 compelling reasons

Why it is important to take care of mental health: 5 compelling reasons (BC AVANCE PSICOLOGOS) Mental health is one of the facets of life that, despite its importance, has been unfairly undervalued or outright invisible for a long time. Luckily, in recent years awareness campaigns have been carried out in this regard thanks to which more and more people who need it go to the psychologist.

However, there is still a certain tendency not to think about the need to take care of mental health; for example, assuming that this can be seen worn out indefinitely until we reach certain work goals because first is work, or always putting the interests of our loved ones ahead of our own, regardless of everything the rest.

For this reason, in this article we explain what they are. The main reasons why you should take care of your mental health In day to day.

• Related article: "Mental health: definition and characteristics according to psychology"

The importance of mental health: why watch over it

Although emotional, cognitive or emotional problems can adopt a wide variety of "disguises", it is necessary that we always pay attention to how we feel and what we do, so that we detect psychological problems as soon as possible significant. Pretending they don't exist will only make things worse.

These are the main reasons why it is very important to take care of mental health, both by adopting habits that help to prevent psychological disorders, such as seeking professional help quickly in cases where complications arise.

1. Mental health problems make it difficult for us to be happy

The first reason why mental health should not be underestimated is that problems in this area have a great capacity to move away from happiness. In other words, not all well-being and the ability to be happy depend on the absence of physical pathologies. In fact, the relative absence of overt physical symptoms that occurs in most psychological disorders (at least during the first few weeks or months of their appearance) makes them not be considered a problem, or that they are simply signs that the person is "weak", capricious or lazy

• Related article: "5 signs of poor mental health that you should not overlook"

2. Not taking care of it affects personal relationships

Mental health problems are not confined to the interior of the person who suffers from them; They are also expressed in the attitude and behavior of the individual towards others. Normally, this causes the person's loved ones to suffer, and in addition, damaged relationships complicate the recovery process of someone who has developed a psychopathology.

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3. Once problems arise, it can be difficult to recognize them in oneself

There are many psychiatric disorders in which one of the symptoms is anosognosia, or the inability to recognize symptoms of a neurological or psychological disorder as such. For example, some people in the manic phase of bipolar disorder do not perceive what happens to them as a problem, and something similar happens with addictions. It is not that the person lies to others, it is that he sincerely believes that what is happening to him are not the symptoms of a disorder.

This makes the search for professional help in therapy take too long, something serious, because the sooner you intervene from the field of psychotherapy or medicine, the better the prognosis.

• Related article: "Anosognosia: when we do not perceive our disorders"

4. Psychological disorders can generate self-destructive behaviors

Another of the fundamental reasons why it is important to take care of mental health is that, if you do not do it, we risk falling into a vicious cycle of self-destructive behavior. These can take the form of very overt and direct ways of harming oneself, such as self-harm or even suicidal behavior, but are not limited to these extreme variants and visible.

For example, depression is known to cause sufferers to adopt sedentary habits and a relative social isolation, and this lifestyle further reinforces the presence of this disorder mental. In the same way, anxiety disorders make us begin to have a terrible fear of the possibility of suffering from these symptoms at a given moment, which makes us more and more vulnerable and makes the psychopathology go away consolidating.

• You may be interested: "Suicidal thoughts: causes, symptoms and therapy"

5. Mental health problems can shape personality

Especially during childhood, suffering from psychological disorders has a key effect on personality development. Although the latter changes little by little throughout life despite not having complications in Regarding mental health, when these do occur, the transformation is faster and tends towards ends. For example, experiencing a traumatic experience can cause the neuroticism of the person is triggered, or they can make the person go from being extraverted to quite introverted.

We must bear in mind that childhood is the phase of life in which we internalize the main ways of interpreting reality and of developing habits and routines, and for this reason, psychological dynamics that the person establishes in his early years will not disappear easily (and for this reason it is essential to go to child-juvenile therapy if problems arise in this sense).

• Related article: "The Major Theories of Personality"

6. Some mental disorders can lead to death

Finally, it should not be forgotten that some particularly severe disorders they carry a risk of death due to the physical wear and tear they produce, or because they generate suicidal ideation. The clear examples of this class of alterations are eating behavior disorders or depression.

Are you looking for professional psychological support?

If you want to have psychotherapeutic assistance for adults, children or adolescents, get in touch with our team of professionals.

In Advance Psychologists We have been offering our services in the field of mental health for 20 years, and we intervene in the areas of neuropsychology, speech therapy, sexology and psychiatry. We work both in face-to-face sessions in our center in Madrid and through online therapy.