What are the standards for mental health?

At present, there is no absolutely unified mental health standard in the domestic and foreign psychology circles that can cover all people and all cultural backgrounds. The core of judgment generally recognized by everyone is actually the ability of an individual to maintain dynamic coordination and adaptation with himself, others, and the environment, rather than the complete absence of negative emotions and the complete absence of worries.

Many people have a misunderstanding about this matter, thinking that "mental health means being happy every day". In fact, this is not the case. I have seen too many clients in the consulting room who took the "10 Standards of Mental Health" found online and regarded normal mood swings as psychological problems. Last month, a young man who worked in Internet operations came here. He had just been promoted to department head. He was worried that he would not be able to lead the team and suffered from insomnia for three or four days. He saw a short video saying that "continuous anxiety for more than a week is a precursor to depression." It scared me so much that I almost couldn't go to class. According to the actual evaluation, his state is completely within the healthy range: although he is anxious, his work arrangements are in order, and the progress of the team projects he leads has exceeded expectations. On weekends, he goes to climb a mountain with friends to sleep, and his mood can be mostly relieved. This kind of fluctuation is not abnormal at all.

When it comes to specific reference for judgment, practitioners with different academic orientations actually have different views. Counselors with a psychoanalytic orientation will pay more attention to the stability of self-perception. To put it bluntly, your evaluation of yourself will not be like a seesaw. You will feel that you are omnipotent when others praise you a few times, and you will feel worthless after being denied once. You can accept that you have strengths and weaknesses, and you will not always compete with yourself. ； A counselor who prefers humanism will pay more attention to the vitality of the individual, that is, even if your life is not going well at the moment, you still have something you are willing to spend energy on, even if it is just coming home from work to water the flowers or watching two episodes of your favorite drama, you will not be stuck in the emptiness of "nothing you do is meaningless" for a long time.

There has been a heated discussion in the academic circles before. Should "high adaptability to social rules" be regarded as the core standard of mental health? The opposition is also clear: for example, there are many minority groups who are different from the mainstream preferences, or young people who are unwilling to obey unreasonable workplace rules. As long as they are self-consistent and do not harm others, they cannot be judged as mentally unhealthy. A parent once brought his son who was in the second grade of junior high school to come here and said that the child always talked back to the teacher and said that he was "seriously rebellious and must have a mental problem." After careful discussion, he found out that the teacher always favored students with good grades and even wrongfully accused students with poor grades of cheating. The child just stood up and told the truth. He usually gets along well with his classmates and his studies are not affected. This state of daring to stick to his own principles is much healthier than blindly obeying and suppressing emotional problems.

In fact, you can think of mental health as our blood pressure. It fluctuates dynamically within a reasonable range. Occasionally, it will be higher or lower due to things. As long as you can adjust it by yourself and it does not affect normal eating, sleeping and socializing, it is completely fine. There is really no need to follow the rules on the Internet and label yourself as "mentally unhealthy".