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What is Mental Health?
Your mental health is made up of things - like how
you feel about yourself, how you deal with stress, and your ability
to form meaningful relationships. While these factors affect
your mental health, no one thing about your feelings or behavior
makes you mentally healthy or unhealthy. There are many degrees
of mental health, just like how you feel better about yourself on
some days than you do on others.
Stress plays an important
role in mental health.
You can feel physical stress as a result of too much to do, not enough sleep,
bad eating habits, or the effects of an illness. Stress can also be mental,
like when you experience an emotionally challenging event like the divorce
of your parents or taking a final exam. Much of people's stress comes
from everyday life, and we may feel physical and mental stress without even
realizing it. Without treating it correctly, constant stress can cause
physical, mental and behavioral problems.
What is a mental illness?
A mental illness are illnesses that cause problems with how
you think, act, feel, and understand your world. You have probably
heard of the more common types of mental illness, like depression,
anxiety disorders, eating disorders and schizophrenia. More than
54 million Americans experience a mental illness each year. Mental
disorders can affect anyone regardless of age, gender, wealth, religion
or race.
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