Mental health is characterized by the ability to establish healthy and loving relationships with family and friends, coping appropriately with setbacks, and integrating successfully into society. When casual discussions about mental health occur, the focus is often on serious mental disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, sociopathic behavior, and even Alzheimer's dementia.
The inability to cope with the challenges of work, and difficulty dealing with relationships may be some of the early signs of poor mental health. Some individuals who act out in response to their inability to cope by using drugs or alcohol, do not have appropriate mental health behavior. People who are hostile or withdrawn to others also would represent mentally unhealthy behavior.
It is important to recognize these abnormal patterns of behavior as abnormal mental health and encourage these people to seek assistance either through their healthcare professional or with some form of therapy would allow people with these problems to avoid the stigma associated with the more serious mental health disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disease. It is not necessary for every person with a coping disorder or poor social relationships to require medications, and if the general public starts to understand that these abnormal behaviors can be corrected with non-pharmacologic therapy such as behavior or some form of group therapy, then more people may be more readily diagnosed and seek appropriate forms of treatment or therapy.
At its core, mental health treatment, should teach coping techniques, and adjustments in people's patterns of behavior. This does not mean that therapy should change someone's personality or reality. Keep the reality -- change the inappropriate coping strategies. This sort of an approach doesn't have to involve any kind of treatment with medications. Mental health treatment has an extensive history, much of it having nothing to do with drug therapy. Medications aren't necessary to treat basic psychological or emotional function. Let's get this truth into open space, where it belongs.
