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MENTAL HEALTH MONTH: PATHWAYS TO WELLNESS |
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 For more than 60 years, Mental Health America and our affiliates across the country have led the observance of May is Mental Health Month by reaching millions of people through the media, local events and screenings. This year's theme is Pathways to Wellness.
Key Messages
- Wellness - it's essential to living a full and productive life. It's about keeping healthy as well as getting healthy.
- Wellness involves a set of skills and strategies that prevent the onset or shorten the duration of illness and promote recovery and well-being. Wellness is more than just the absence of disease.
- Wellness is more than an absence of disease. It involves complete general, mental and social well-being. And mental health is an essential component of overall health and well-being. The fact is our overall well-being is tied to the balance that exists between our emotional, physical, spiritual and mental health.
- Whatever our situation, we are all at risk of stress given the demands of daily life and the challenges it brings-at home, at work and in life. Steps that build and maintain well-being and help us all achieve wellness involve a balanced diet, regular exercise, enough sleep, a sense of self-worth, development of coping skills that promote resiliency, emotional awareness, and connections to family, friends and community.
- These steps should be complemented by taking stock of one's well-being through regular mental health checkups and screenings. Just as we check our blood pressure and get cancer screenings, it's a good idea to take periodic reading of our emotional well-being.
- Fully embracing the concept of wellness not only improves health in the mind, body and spirit, but also maximizes one's potential to lead a full and productive life. Using strategies that promote resiliency and strengthen mental health and prevent mental health and substance use conditions lead to improved general health and a healthier society: greater academic achievement by our children, a more productive economy, and families that stay together.
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 Lately we are so often focused on others, what we have to do, or what we have not gotten done. Social media can make us believe that everyone else has it better or is living the life we want to live. It is time to put the focus back on ourselves. How so, you may ask? This can be done by simply taking a few moments of reflection each day this month to focus on gratefulness. Merriam-Webster online defines gratefulness as: “appreciative of benefits received, expressing gratitude.” With that in mind, commit to writing down three things each day that bring you a sense of gratitude; they can be big or small, regular day-to-day events or the unexpected. (Try not to repeat the things that you are grateful for!)
 We have created a 28 day Gratitude Log for you to use. (Download Yours Here) We have included a space on the log for you to reflect after your month of being grateful to see if it has affected your life in any way. Do you feel like you have taken more time for YOU? Are you more appreciative of the people around you? Has your mood changed? Follow us on Facebook as we undertake the challenge and see what others are grateful for also! Hope you will join us for this Gratitude Challenge!
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Sheriff Demings discusses gun control on 'Flashpoint' |
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Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings and Tom Greenman, of Acute Care Services from Lakeside Behavioral Health Care, join Lauren Rowe on "Flashpoint." Video will open in a new window. |
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