About Emotional Health

Emotional health is…

… part of our overall health concerned with the way we think and feel.

… it refers to our sense of well-being, our ability to cope with life events.

… and our ability to acknowledge and respect emotions, our own and those of others.

 

Is it the same as happiness?

Not exactly.  Happiness is an emotion which people feel for a short period of time, often alongside many other emotions. Emotional health is about more than this, it is the ability to cope with difficult times in life, and this depends on a person’s knowledge, skills, experience, social and environmental circumstances. If someone has good emotional health they are more likely to cope with difficult times, and hence they may be happier in life.

 

How do I improve my emotional health?

You can think about emotional health as a sliding scale, from poor to good, which we all sit on somewhere. We slide along the scale, depending on how we are coping with what is going on in our lives at that moment.

Good emotional health is about keeping yourself emotionally balanced. But life is full of ups and downs and coping with these isn’t easy. Even an event that many would say is positive, like starting a new school, moving house, having a baby or getting married, can be extremely stressful.

Improving emotional health is done through looking after yourself day to day, and through developing emotional skills, improving awareness, living in a supportive family or community and in a healthy environment.

 

Emotional skills

The ability to cope with difficult times in your life is not something we are born with, it is something we learn. We learn from our own experiences and from copying, or avoiding, the experiences of the people around us.

For example, if you have grown up in a family where people do not talk about their feelings or what is worrying them, then it is likely you will find it very difficult to do so. 

Skills considered to be important for emotional health are:

• Self awareness
  
• Empathy
  
• Social skills like listening and relationship skills
  
• Managing difficult feelings
  
• Motivation

These skills can be taught for example in schools or work place training, or learnt through life experience. For information on Samaritans schools and workplace programmes click here.

 

How do I look after myself day to day?

If you were trying to keep a healthy body, what would you do? You would keep active and eat healthy foods, and make sure you got enough rest to recover for the next day. Keeping a healthy mind, works in exactly the same way. Keep the brain active like through work, learning, reading, writing and thinking. De-stress through expressing your thoughts and feelings, either through talking or activities. Examples could be art, music, games, sports, a hobby and spending time with friends. Give your mind time to relax through good rest or meditation.

The trick is to keep mind and body balanced. A quick way to check is to ask yourself how are you feeling? If it is not good then consider if there is something more you could do to either to keep your brain active or to de-stress. If you are not coping that well, make sure you tell someone and get some help.

 

Emotional awareness, attitudes & stigma

People generally have a far better understanding of physical health than of emotional health. Whereas people feel comfortable talking about most physical health problems and illness, they don’t like to talk about emotional problems or mental illness.

Talking about feelings is sometimes seen as taboo or a weakness. When people suffer emotional or mental health problems, like depression, a phobia, a eating disorder, or dementia, this is often not openly talked about. People suffering mental health problems say the stigma they experience is sometimes more stressful than the illness itself. Inaccurate media reporting which makes people with mental health problems sound dangerous or unstable is also unhelpful. The result of this is that people feel excluded from society and in some cases don’t get jobs, or housing they are entitled to.

The more people know about emotional issues and talk about them, the more accepted these become and the more included people feel. To find out more about emotional health problems visit our Feeling Low section.

 

More information

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