While mental health is important to address year-round, Mental Health Awareness Month provides a dedicated time for people, organizations, and communities to join their voices to broadcast the message: “Mental health matters!”

We all have mental health. Mental health is our ability to engage with our emotions, thoughts, interactions with others and the world around us. Mental health affects how we think, feel and act every day. The best way to protect mental health is to pay attention to it even when you’re feeling ok or even good. Just like with our physical health, we can do things that make us mentally healthier and happier.

Self-connection, or self-care, is about finding practices that help you thrive, and it can include a range of things. It takes purposeful effort, but it can help you maintain or improve your daily mental well-being. It can be helpful to think of it as taking time to connect with yourself and care for yourself as you would others.

Prioritizing time to connect to yourself doesn’t have to be time consuming or expensive, and it is important for you to find out what works best for you. Below are a few different ways to engage in self-care from to the Mental Health Coalition:

• Physical: Notice and address the stress that shows up in your body. Notice what physical activities reduce or alleviate physical pain, tension and mental stress for you. Some common activities are massages, hugging loved ones with their consent, fitness, dance, aromatherapy, rest and boundary setting.
• Emotional: Involves tending to your own internal emotional world – especially your mood and feelings. Ways to tend to your emotional self can include connecting with others, naming and acknowledging your emotions, psychotherapy, journaling or creative writing, art and setting boundaries for your emotional well-being.
• Cognitive: Engages in activities that are intellectually rewarding and/or stimulating. This can include reading, writing, listening to books or podcasts, watching films or psychotherapy.
• Spiritual: This can take many different forms and does not have to be tied to formal religion. It means getting in touch with the less tangible aspects of yourself and the world around you. This can include meditation, breathwork, prayer, connecting with a spiritual or religious community or mantras.

Creating positive habits is a great way to support your mental health. Mental health plays a big role in overall well-being. When you feel mentally well, you’re more able to enjoy life and the people in it, feel better about yourself, keep up with fulfilling relationships and manage stress.

Experiencing poor mental health is not the same as having a mental health condition. A mental health condition, or mental illness, refers to a set of symptoms that have been identified by a health provider. We all have tough days and weeks, and everyone manages their mental health every day. People with mental health conditions experience change in emotions, thinking and/or behavior. For some, this means extreme and unexpected changes in mood, like feeling more sad or worried than usual. For others, it means not thinking clearly, pulling away from friends and activities you used to enjoy or hearing voices that others do not. Mental illness is treatable; it is not always a permanent state of being.

The opportunities and resources we have available in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and communities impact our mental health just like they impact our physical health. Mental health is not just about what we do as individuals. For example, when organization and policies support belonging and connectedness, they promote mental health.

For more information on how to safely talk about mental health and suicide, visit Safe Messaging Around Mental Health and Suicide (https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/suicide/documents/suicidemessaging.pdf)

Information provided by the Minnesota Department of Health