In this lesson, you will learn about mental health and self-care. One is a state of being and one is a practice.

What is mental health?

Mental health involves your emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects your thoughts, emotions, behaviours, decisions, and relationships.

Additionally, good mental health is not the absence of a mental illness. If you have a diagnosed mental illness, it doesn’t necessarily mean your mental health is poor. Likewise, if you don’t have a diagnosed mental illness, you can still have poor mental health.

Having good mental health means you can remain resilient in the face of challenges. You can love yourself despite your flaws. Further, you can maintain healthy relationships beyond yourself. When you experience negative thoughts, you can challenge them and move on, rather than obsess. People with good mental health make and uphold healthy boundaries.

Good mental health is essential to your overall health and quality of life.

Mental Health and Chronic Pain

Chronic pain is a complex issue, beyond a health condition. It affects the whole person, including their physical, mental, and social health. 

Living with chronic pain can be an extremely stressful experience. Not only are you dealing with pain daily, but many aspects of your life become disrupted. It may become difficult to work, socialize, and engage in daily activities like before. 

For this reason, chronic pain can negatively affect mental health, as quality of life is lowered.

Living with chronic pain is emotionally and physically stressful. As such, stress hormones and neurotransmitters are often chronically elevated. This can impact overall mood, behavior, and thought patterns. 

In research, people with chronic pain were 4X more likely to have depression and anxiety than people without chronic pain. Additionally, specific chronic pain conditions are associated with higher incidences of specific mental health outcomes. For instance, women with fibromyalgia have a 5X higher risk of developing anxiety disorders (often obsessive-compulsive disorder).

Unfortunately, challenges with your mental health can also impact your chronic pain. Depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses can perpetuate avoidance cycles. For example, someone with depression and chronic pain may be less likely to keep up with a treatment regime because they’re having a hard time getting out of bed. 

Therefore, taking care of your mental health is vital when you have chronic pain. This course will summarize several ways you can act each day to support your mental wellbeing. 

What is Self-Care?

Self-care is any action that helps support your well-being. When you think of self-care, you may picture a nice bath with candles around it. However, self-care can take many forms and be individualized to your needs.  

Self-care can help to maintain your mental health and support your treatment and recovery. It is investing time in yourself, to improve your physical and mental health.  

Caring for yourself can help you manage stress, lower your risk of illness, and increase your energy. Even small acts of self-care each day can have a major impact.

Some strategies include eating a healthy diet, getting good sleep, and exercising. All of these are associated with better mental health and a reduced risk of mental illness.

As previously mentioned, self-care is very personal. Therefore, it’s necessary to discover what works for you. Try out different forms of self-care to see what makes you feel good, relaxed, and refreshed.

It’s important to note that self-care isn’t a cure or treatment for mental illnesses. Rather, it can help to alleviate some symptoms, and work as a coping technique. To better manage your mental health, work to understand what triggers your symptoms and which strategies help you.  

This course will provide several suggestions of ways you can care for yourself.

Practice

Below, you will find the worksheet for this lesson: the Self-Care Worksheet. This worksheet will help you reflect on what self-care means to you. You’ll practice several types of self-care and reflect on what helped and what didn’t.

Reflect

Take a moment to reflect on this content. What does self-care means to you? What recharges you and what drains you?

Can you think of any self-care activities that you would like to try?

In the next lesson, you will learn about seeking professional help for support with your mental health.