{"id":312507,"date":"2022-05-16T17:11:26","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T21:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wanderlust.com\/?p=312507"},"modified":"2022-05-18T09:55:07","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T13:55:07","slug":"four-ways-to-positively-impact-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wanderlust.com\/ja\/journal\/four-ways-to-positively-impact-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Ways to Positively Impact Mental Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drew Ramsey, MD<\/a> is a frequent Wanderlust collaborator who has appeared at Wanderlust festivals and at Wellspring. You can view his Speakeasy talk, ‘Eat to Beat Depression’ on Wanderlust TV<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Every May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I want to talk about how you can have a great month and about some of the actions and mindsets that are important, in order to make this month good for your mental health and the mental health of those around you.<\/p>\n

Awareness<\/h3>\n

First, let\u2019s start off with the idea of awareness. What is mental health awareness<\/a>? How can we think about that really broadly in the first few days of May? What does mental health mean to you? What are some of the things that you\u2019re doing to help your health or not?<\/p>\n

The most important thing in the first few days of mental health awareness month is to think about your mental health and the aspects of it that you want to improve. You don\u2019t have to have a formal mental health diagnosis to know that you need a little help with your sleep hygiene or that your mood gets a little too low, or you get anxious in social situations. These are all things that you might want to set as goals to work on. I also urge you to think of awareness when it comes to the people in your life who are struggling a little bit with some aspect of their mental health. Your support could be meaningful.<\/p>\n

Acknowledge Stigma and Bias<\/h3>\n

The second step, is to acknowledge stigma and bias. We all carry stigma and bias. Stigma is the idea that people have some indication that others are diseased, challenged or inferior because of their mental health diagnosis. We have a set of attitudes towards them. For example, you might be concerned if you learned a teacher at school had bipolar disorder or someone who was working with you had a psychotic disorder or a past history of addiction. You might make a lot of assumptions about them. That\u2019s stigma and bias. It\u2019s really important to think about that because we all carry those biases. Mental health disorders can be very scary because they are somewhat unknown and we\u2019re all vulnerable to them. We all have a human brain so that makes us susceptible to mental illness.<\/p>\n