wellness

Image the daily life of a child.

"Elijah, you need to get up for school now.”

“Elijah, you need to brush your teeth now!”

“Elijah, stop yelling at your sister and get down here.”

“Elijah, do you have your bookbag?  Where is your homework?”

“Elijah, you need to hurry, or you will miss the bus."

When Elijah gets to school, it starts again.

"No running on the playground!”  

“Put your pencils away now.”

“No talking in the hallway."

"You are what you eat." You might have heard this phrase at some time in your life.   It comes from a French phrase from 1826, "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." [Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are].  Slightly different, but you get the point. "You are what you eat" originated with an idea in Europe in 1800 that "the food one eats a bearing on one's state of mind and health." Well, people in 1800 were correct.  There is more and more evidence that food can have an impact on your mental health.

If you are looking for a quick mental health boost, researchers recommend getting outside.   They have shown that just being outside can help people feel more mentally healthy. It feels that science has caught up with what people already know: how many times have you, when you felt upset, just wanted to “get some fresh air.” Well, it turns out that it works.

In the previous post on mental health wellness, we talked about the need to meet with a friend face-to-face, either just talking or eating together. However, some people have only a few or no friends.  In this post and the next, we share recommendations on how to be social even if you don’t have many friends.

May is Mental Health Awareness month.  This month, organizations and agencies publish articles on how to identify mental health issues and best treatment practices.  This year we’d would like to take a slightly different approach and focus on mental health wellness.  In the next few weeks, we will present activities that have been shown to improve mental health. These activities work for people who are currently in treatment, have been in therapy, and want to stay well, and those who have never been in treatment but want to simply improve their mental health.