Mental Health Facts
What affects your mental health?
Your mental health can be influenced by a number of factors, including:
- Your genes
- Coping with a natural disaster
- Divorce, separation or the breakup of a long-term relationship
- Caring for an aging parent
- The death of a loved one
- The birth of your child
- Losing your job or career changes
- Infertility
- Financial stressors such as cost of living crisis or bankruptcy
- Being diagnosed and living with a serious illness, or suffering a major injury
- Moving to a new home
- Support
Admitting to yourself (and others, if necessary) that you have a problem, and getting the help you need is a sign of great strength.
What is Depression?
While we all feel sad, moody or low from time to time, some people experience these feelings intensely, for long periods of time (weeks, months or even years) and sometimes without any apparent reason. Depression is more than just a low mood – it’s a serious condition that affects your physical and mental health.
What are Anxiety Disorders?
Anxiety is more than just feeling stressed or worried. While stress and anxious feelings are a common response to a situation where we feel under pressure, they usually pass once the stressful situation has passed, or ‘stressor’ is removed.
What is Stress?
Stress is an unavoidable and in small doses a very important part of our lives. Without it, you’d never have been able to ask your high-school babe out on that first date or pull an all-nighter before a final exam. You couldn’t beat out an infield single, your heart wouldn’t pound while watching a horror movie, and you wouldn’t feel the slightest joy at the birth of your child or buying a car. In some cases, stress can actually save your life.