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About Emotional Health

What is emotional health?

Is emotional health 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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