Mental health is a state of physical well-being or a lack of mental disorder. It is a state of an individual that is “functioning in a satisfactory degree of both mental and behavioral adjustment”. The word “mood” is sometimes used interchangeably with “state of mind”, but both are actually quite different. A person has a mental state (what we normally call “mental health”) only if that individual is able to function in his or her everyday world with relatively little help from others and when his or her mood is stable. There is no such thing as mental health or mental well being that encompasses all mental conditions. It depends on the patient’s particular condition. But one common example of a disorder, if it is not the result of trauma, is depression.
Mental disorders can be divided into two groups: those that cause the person’s mental health to deteriorate or those that cause the person to have problems in controlling or modifying his or her emotional response to events, to his or her environment, or to other people. These two groups are different because people with mental disorders do not show signs of deteriorating mental health. If this condition is left untreated, the person may suffer serious depression or other mental conditions, but his or her mental health will not be affected. People with serious emotional problems, however, often feel that there is nothing they can do.
The number of mental disorders and the types of mental disorders vary from one person to the next. The person with the mental disorder may need treatment for more than one disorder, whereas the person without any mental disorder may have several conditions. It is important to note that mental health varies from one patient to the next.
