What is Mental Health and Wellbeing?
Being healthy doesn’t only mean eating well, drinking water, sleeping plenty and exercising. Whilst these things do wonders for our physical (and mental) health, we need to consider other ways to make our minds healthy too.
Mental health and wellbeing relates to your brain and your emotions. Your mental health can be affected by internal (biological) and external (environmental) causes. It is important we do all we can to control external influences on our mental health so that we stay emotionally healthy. For some of you, this could be talking to a friend after a bad day; painting a picture to ‘express yourself’; going for a long walk with the dog; or relaxing and watching television. We all have different ways to ‘recharge’ and look after our mental health. So it is important you find what works for you!
The following information on this page will help you to look after your own mental health and wellbeing.
The Five ways to wellbeing are simple things that we can all do to improve our emotional health and wellbeing:
- Connect
- Be active
- Get creative
- Be mindful
- Give to others
Connect: Spend time with family and friends. Enjoy doing things together and talking to each other.
Be active: It keeps you physically healthy, and makes you feel good
Get creative: Try something new. Try a new hobby, or learn about something just because it interests you.
Be mindful: Take a break to see how you feel. Relax and look around you or listen to music, take a few deep breaths.
Give to others: Do something for a friend or relation/adult, as well as making them feel good, it can make you feel good too!
Have a look at the SCARF wellbeing wheel and see if you can create some of your own strategies to achieve wellbeing:
