Mental Health versus physical health

The body and the mind cannot be separated. One reacts to the other. Therefore when one is in pain, is depressed, when problems arise, all the body is affected. The best way to a healthy future is to begin thinking healthy thoughts. Don't allow a down day, or a caustic remark from a friend or some bystander to do permanent damage to your health.

In other words, understand that no one knows your feelings, your thoughts, your good intentions as you do. Don't let the antagonism of others put you in a bad mood. Yes, I know that is easier said than done, but it is possible to see the person with the negative remarks, the hurtful words as a person not in control of themselves. Love them anyway, and hope that they too will learn to take control of their mind and body interactions.

Perfect mental and physical health is not possible but that does not mean it's not a worthy goal to work toward. As an example of what is meant by that truth: You get up in the morning one day feeling great. You love the whole world, not for what it does, but for what it could be. You ask God to help you do the best you know how for that one day. Then you accept your day as you proceed from hour to hour to do the best you have to do with.

The next day may not be as assuring. You had a restless night and maybe your arthritis or your back pain is pulling you down. You do what you can do to ease the situation, restart your exercise program,  decide to lose weight, walk more, or do whatever relieves your pain, and you accept the fact you may have been a bit negligent in taking care of your self. What ever you do, you don't blame others for your bad feelings. You simply use your mind to see where you may have been at fault.

Life lived thus responsibly is life worth living. You don't use up all your time worrying over your self, but instead, you take care or yourself so you can be a use to others. Taking care of yourself is not selfish; its keeping your mind and body in the best shape possible so you can help others with their problems. But even if they aren't receptive to your offers to help, you can at least keep them in mind when you pray and honor your creator.

Thoughts and ideas and words, spoken or simply thought, are not static. They go places and carry on their good wishes even when you know it not. Therefore, any readers that come this way, know that these words are meant to assist you in thinking about mental health as being the first step toward total bodily health. May God bless and heal you. I say that because no matter how healthy you think your are, there are weakened areas that may need a kind word, a prayer or a smile from time to time.
Until the next time I blog, which is not often, truthfully, keep smiling and keep on working on your mental and physical health.

Perfection is a goal to work toward, yet mental health thinking tells us it is an impossibility. Only heaven is that perfect place and earth is in no way near heaven. Yet, having a model of perfection in one's mind when a   task is being undertaken is necessary. Otherwise we would never advance out of not caring and nothing better will ever happen.

Perfectionism creates its own failures. It demands so much out of a person that they eventually become fearful of ever accomplishing anything worthy and they stop trying. To illustrate that concept, let's look at art. That is one subject that is wide open for criticism, for experimentation, for thought and yet, truthfully, neither the practice of it nor the talk and discussion about are perfect. Each person has his and her own interpretations of the subject and these depend on ability, inheritance, knowledge and interest. Art is a personal matter and if the person isn't interested, art doesn't matter.

For a person to be successful in art, he must be his own judge. That means he sets no impossible tasks for himself but he uses whatever ability he has, or interest, or desire and take it from there. Taking myself as an example, the only one I truly know, I am no artist; I am no artist in the sense of being in the league with those who create world renowned paintings. I would not even be considered a candidate to be labeled a artist for a local art group.

That's fine, it frees me to enjoy the world of art as I see it. I don't need to have a cheering squad, I know when I am delighted with a 'work of art' I have created. And too, I often don't start out with anything in mind. In other words I don't see a picture and think to create it as it is. I don't have that kind of talent, nor actually care to; what I do have is the love of art for art's sake, whatever that means, and I first start by dabbling. In fact dabbling is about all I do. I love the colors and I like to think a sheet of paper or a canvas has hidden meanings and I am out to discover what they are. Of course I know better, but that makes for an apt description of how I approach art.

This example is from a series I did about thirty years ago. I have several different versions.  I was cutting  cutting out crosses from card stock and painting them with different versions of women. I've long forgotten what I was thinking about but I remember how absorbed I was in the effort. I don't remember much about the dabbling but I still have the results.

I approach art as a discovery. A discovery after the fact. I follow wherever the paint leads. I get suggestions as I go along. It's the same with writing, you begin a sentence and follow it through. You reread it and make changes. With painting after it's finished there's few changes I make, however. Once its finished, it usually stays that way. It's as if that's a moment of time and the next encounter with art will be another encounter with time.

One could get the notion that art is therapeutic with me. It is. It tells me that somehow greater and more in control guides me. I can either accept that or make myself miserable trying to be the boss. I understand that each person has artistic ability and once they discover their own particular version, they'll never be bored. No man made art is perfect, but that needn't be a deterrent to strive to be as mentally healthy as one can be.
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Mental Health resolutions for 2013

A great way to begin this new year is to resolve to become more mentally healthy. How do you do that? That all depends on your thinking and how much time and effort you're willing to put forth to promote the idea the idea of mental wellness. No one is mentally healthy all the time, wrong thoughts and wrong actions creep in but if we're committed to reviewing our thoughts and our thinking whenever we find they're out of kilter with mental health, we will progress in our efforts to promote mental wellness.

Ideas to consider:
1. Mental health is not mental illness, but is the most important part of overall health. A mentally healthy person will be able to deal with all their health problems wholesomely.

2. The mind is inseparable from the rest of the body. It cannot be treated as if it's an entity outside of the body.

3. Not every little down period or feeling or every little ache needs medication. Pain is a reminder telling us something is not right and the healthiest way is to try find out what causes the pain rather than tossing it aside by medication. Medicine is serious business and professionals should guide its use.

4. Stop blaming heredity for mental problems. Sure, much of mental illness, as well as physical illness is inherited, but if so, learning how to deal with it is the first step in managing it.

PS: more ideas on how to become mentally healthy will be forthcoming. 

Living simply helps keep your mind uncluttered. And an uncluttered mind is more able to function and is far more efficient. More and more this is beginning to take hold of the imaginations of many people who are tired of clutter. They’re tired of clutter in their homes and they’re beginning to see a connection between cluttered home, overstuffed garages to cluttered minds and overstuffed egos. To learn more about how to unclutter your life and where to get more information check out Living Simply, an online site.  

Mental illness and the court system
It’s often heard in courtrooms that a criminal is not mentally ill and is able to stand trial; or as in some cases, the other verdict, they’re mentally ill and will be treated in a hospital. Aren’t all criminals mentally ill to some extent? What’s the difference?

Mental illness is a broad descriptive term that categorizes illnesses and mal-functioning of the brain and nervous system. It runs the gamut from mild to severe, acquired through drugs and environmental conditioning to inherited and those related to aging such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Criminally insane individuals are also mentally ill but they come into the court system because of some crime they’ve committed. Judges, aided by psychiatrists and other professionals must decide if they’re insane or sane. If they’re sane they stand trial for their crime; if insane they’ll be committed to a mentally ill hospital and possibly treated for their illness. They may or may not be released out into the public again; it all depends on how severe the crime and how severe their illness.

The two above explanations are easy to understand but nothing is as simple as one is often led to believe. While the two systems, medicine and the law, have two different ways of dealing with their particular problems, they are actually quite closely related. They depend on each other for answers when they come up with puzzling problems. Despite their ways of determining if a person knows right from wrong, both have guidelines that are often not enough to allow the victim, if found to be insane, to go out again in public.

Where are the loopholes?

Criminals with their cunning minds often fall back on the insanity plea to avoid incarceration for life, or worse still, in states where the option is legal, sentenced to death. The mentally ill, especially those with the ability to think rationally at times, will sometimes attempt to appear mentally healthy by giving the right answers to questions of orientation as to place, time and other relevant questions in order to get out of the hospital. Both of these situations are definitely not what a normal mentally healthy person will do. It depends on the reasoning mind behind the actions.

Inadequate terminology

Perpetrators of hideous crimes, if found sane, must stand trial. They are right in that assessment, they must be convicted and put away; but are they sane? Not according to the mental health side of the picture. No one in their right mind would do such a thing. What then? The lines are drawn between lawyers and doctors.
Courts have adopted sane and insane as a dividing line to decide how to proceed with the trial. If declared insane they are then given over to the psychiatric facilities for evaluation and treatment and if declared sane are tried and if convicted, penalized. This makes law possible and attempts as much as possible to be fair and honest.

Are the criminally sane devoid of mental illness?

Mental illness is a curse of modern life. Drugs and environmental habits and societal fallacies attest to that. Living sanely often goes against societal norms and more than that mental health is measured more by degrees than by precise dividing lines. Of course the criminally insane is not mentally healthy. Their minds runs counter to good mental health and regardless what led them astray they must not be allowed to walk the streets and continue on in their crimes.

The best approach is to attempt to correct their behavior problems while in prison. Many prisons try to salvage their criminals; many do not for whatever reason. The biggest drawback to rehabilitation is time and money and most of all over crowed prisons. Yet, no one knows for sure what a little human kindness can do to a sick mind but many humane wardens believe it’s worth a try.

Mental illnesses

“Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.”

Insanity in the court system

“What happens to a defendant after a judge or jury returns a finding of insanity depends on the crime committed, and on the state in which the trial takes place.”
The importance of knowing the reasoning behind court decisions as well as medical terminology goes a long way in how mentally unhealthy people are treated. While horrendous crimes against society cannot be glossed over, many prisoners sent to prison can be rehabilitated. Society can no longer pretend the mentally ill are those on the other side of the fence; mental illness touches everyone in some capacity or another. Mentally healthy people are aware of this.

Other mental health articles I’ve written on similar subjects: Mental illness and the criminal justice system; and Mental Health: A new way of dealing with crime and mental health and Connection between intelligence and insanity. Other articles can be found on my Helum (About Me) page.

Labor Day 2016
Labor day is in celebration of the workforce, the backbone of our economy, but why then does it have such a uninspiring name? As a writer who writes daily for Helium, words are a great way to get in touch with your thoughts.

Many times I start my writing day a bit grumpy, especially on Monday mornings, much preferring to sleep until ten. Then wow, I survey ideas and writing notions and my outlook changes drastically.

About the word labor. It sets a tone that gives little incentive but if one overlooks its connotations and instead prefers to see the work day as a way to start on a new day, a new adventure with less depressing thoughts, then mental health has inched forward. And good mental health is what living and working is all about. Therefore be joyful about Labor Day and celebrate it joyfully and stop allowing it's bad associations get you down.

PS. The picture? Generally I I upload one of my scribblings of art or some scanned piece of past art, doodle or what not, but this time, it's a picture of my daughter and myself. I have the long blond hair and with my right arm I'm holding my baby. She's grown now, has a family of her own and is the proud owner of her own baby safety business. I'm holding my baby safely and whether or not I'm having more fun as a blond, gray headed old lady, is debatable but that picture popped up when I went searching for an appropriate picture to adorn my Labor Day viewpoints for mental health.