The five a day maxim

A little while ago I was passed an article with a title to the effect of “Americans will not pay anywhere near as much to safeguard their mental health as they do their physical health” Now it wasn’t exactly that but the crux of the article was based on a survey of people who when asked if they could safeguard their physical or mental health which would they choose, they invariably chose their physical health but it got me thinking.

Which would I choose?

And despite having suffered from mental health problems for many years I can’t honestly say that I would choose my mental health either. I have this aversion to letting myself become physically unable to do things that I don’t have for my mental deterioration and I’m not sure given that question I wouldn’t say my physical health also.

Interestingly though the article was being written to make the point that people would not or did not see the value, of safeguarding their mental health. And I’m not sure that’s what they demonstrated. I value my mental health more than my physical and have spent both time and money trying to be in a good mental state. In fact I have spent far more trying to keep me in a good mental state than I have ever done for my physical health yet I am still not sure I would have answered my mental health to that question.

I would rather they had asked about what people were prepared to do to protect it in simpler terms. For instance, would you alter your behaviour with 5 simple techniques, would you spend £30-40 a month, would spend 3-4 hours a week or a combination of these and others with higher costs to maintain you’re good mental health. This I feel would have been far more likely to gauge how much value people put on good mental health. It seems that what they did fell woefully short of any real consideration of how much value people put on their mental health.

The point for me is that it didn’t get them to consider what they would do and given the number of campaigns to improve the country’s physical health it seems odd that ones to improve our mental health have never been tried. I’m thinking of the less fat in your diet, 3 hours of exercise a week, you need to take 10,000 steps a day and the pedometer give a ways and the eat 5 a day campaigns. But nothing has been done to either give information or guidance to the public about how to maintain it’s good mental health and this seems a terrible waste.

I wonder if this is not just another thing that can be chalked up to stigma or if it is something different?

It seems that most of the time people have no idea about what good mental health is, whether they have it or how to improve it. And if you think I’m kidding then maybe you should consider the estimates of how many people are suffering with depression and going undiagnosed as seen in the household surveys that have been done over the years. Is it really likely that stigma is the sole cause for why people do not seek help or do they simply not see that they have a need? Certainly speaking openly and more frequently about how you feel would help. People would then be able to compare how they feel with others and this may highlight to them the differences but really is that the only problem?

I doubt it. There will always be those who have good mental health and resilience in the same way as there will always be natural athletes who keep themselves fit, however as a whole I think some idea of what you could do to improve your own mental wellbeing would benefit us all. There are many things that could be suggested that would help yet it seems that they haven’t been. Isn’t it about time people started to consider it a priority and find a 5 a day maxim for good mental health?