The Importance Of Mental Health In Overall Quality Of Life

Quality of life and mental health are related to each other. They both measure the quality of how you live. Mental health impacts the quality of your life in more ways than you realize. It impacts your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and influences how you connect with those around you. It also affects how you respond to the events in your life, handle stress, and perform at work.

Mental health can impact your perception of quality of life. A person with anxiety and depression considers life devoid of comfort and hectic. These feelings resist social interactions, even though seclusion is one of the leading causes of mental health issues. Prioritizing your mental health and resolving issues is synonymous with improving the overall quality of life.

Mental health impacts your quality of life. Poor mental health negatively impacts your daily life and relationship with your family and loved ones and make you feel lonely.

With that said, some ways mental health affects your quality of life are mentioned below:

Improve Your Academic Performance

Positive mental health helps you with your studies. Students with better mental health display higher academic performance. They have better attendance and are more likely to graduate on time compared to those with compromised mental health. Anxiety and depression affect a student’s time in an educational institution, making every moment in a life devoid of joy and excitement.

Encouraging students with mental health problems to seek help from educational psychologists with the right expertise and qualification is very important. Someone with at least a masters in educational psychology would be the right person to consult.

These qualified individuals can help students by providing practical strategies for managing mental health issues and improving academic performance and quality of life. Research also shows that people who receive help for their mental health issues have more chances of exhibiting a reduction in the symptoms than those with no outside intervention.

Improve Relationships With Family and Loved Ones

If you face mental health issues, you are more likely to have strained relationships with friends and family. Conversely, having control over your emotions, moods, and thoughts makes you more patient, empathetic, and understanding towards your relationships and less reactive to things you disapprove of. This positivity helps strengthen your relationships and promotes connection with family and friends.

Improve Productivity at Work

Depression is the leading mental health disability, becoming extremely prevalent in the US. About 16.1 million adults experience Major Depressive Disorder every year. Mental health problems such as burnout, depression, and stress are closely linked with productivity.  Globally, more than 12 billion days at work are lost yearly due to mental illnesses (depression and anxiety). The loss of productivity also costs the world about 1 trillion dollars annually.

According to CDC, poor mental health affects your capacity to take on responsibilities and demonstrate confidence at work. It intrudes on your ability to complete job-related physical tasks about 20% of the time. It affects your cognitive performance about 35% of the time.

That said, good mental health and performance at work go hand in hand. Mental health improves your resilience, helping you face the challenges at the workplace with courage. Workplaces that ensure the better mental health of their employees successfully reduce absenteeism and improve productivity and their bottom line.

Helps You Enjoy Life

Just like bodily fitness helps you stay strong, better mental health assists in sustaining a positive state of mind, allowing you to enjoy your life more. Better mental health gives you a sense of inner peace and well-being.  A positive mental state encourages you to enjoy your hobbies. You can be creative, more receptive, and more daring when it comes to decision-making.

Educating the public is integral to breaking the stigma related to mental health. People must be made aware of the benefits of seeking help and how curing their mental health can improve their lives.

Improve Your Coping Skills

The death of a relative or family member, loss of job, financial crisis, and so on can be devastating for anyone experiencing them. However, how these events affect a person with robust mental health differs significantly from someone struggling with mental health issues. Better mental health helps you cope with life’s tragedies by giving you unseen inner strength. A positive state of mind enables you to handle difficulties head-on and return to your life again.

Improve Your Physical Health

The relationship between mental and physical health is not new. Chronic stress reduces the efficiency of your immune system. As a result, it opens doors for many physical health issues, such as obesity and diabetes.  On the other hand, positive mental health helps prevent serious physical health conditions. According to a study, positive mental health reduces the possibility of strokes and heart attacks. Reducing stress and sustaining good mental health is essential for better heart health.

Improve Personal Hygiene

Someone experiencing difficulty handling mental health problems demonstrates an inability to keep up with certain aspects of their daily life, such as personal hygiene. A person with compromised psychological health stays in the same dress for days as it seems comfortable, and they don’t plan to go out or interact with others. They don’t even wash their clothes or keep their house orderly and clean. Stacks of dishes always clutter their kitchen sinks and create an unhygienic environment.

Individuals with depression or anxiety are not particular about bathing. They are least bothered about their messy, greasy, and matted hair. They seldom pay attention to brushing their teeth or other aspects of oral hygiene. On the other hand, a person with sound mental health doesn’t demonstrate the lifestyle mentioned above. Their awareness of their surroundings encourages them to improve their hygiene and maintain a personality.  Just like better mental health positively affects personal hygiene, the latter impinges on the former too. Personal hygiene boosts your self-esteem, making you look appealing and confident to others.

Quality of life and mental health are related to each other. They both measure the quality of how you live. Mental health impacts the quality of your life in more ways than you realize.

Break the Stigma Surrounding Mental Health

Positive mental health improves the quality of life in many ways. Many of those ways have already been listed in the article above. But you cannot reap the rewards associated with positive mental health if you don’t break the stigma surrounding mental health issues. This stigma prevents people from being vocal about their problems and seeking help. People feel ashamed, fear being judged by their near and dear ones, and suffer in silence.

More than half (54.7%) of the people with mental health problems in the US don’t seek professional help. Educating the public is integral to breaking the stigma related to mental health. People must be made aware of the benefits of seeking help and how curing their mental health can improve their lives. This includes providing accurate information.  Additionally, professionals can play their part in their work domains. For instance, experts with advanced degrees in educational psychology can help students in educational institutions.

Conclusion

Mental health impacts your quality of life. Poor mental health negatively impacts your daily life and relationship with your family and loved ones and make you feel lonely. It also impacts your life negatively and affects your overall well-being.

Therefore, seeking professional help and prioritizing your mental well-being must always be on the agenda for improving your quality of life.