Explain Mental Health With This Simple Comparison

Explain mental health to people who don’t understand with this simple comparison from clinical psychologist Raksha Rajesh.

You can explain mental health like this: Your mental health is just like your skin. Just how your skin reacts to different seasons differently — sometimes it might feel oily, sometimes it might be dry, sometimes you will get sunburnt — similarly, your mental health also reacts to different circumstances and events in your life which might hurt you. 

We have learned how to take care of our skin, right? If we get wounded, we put a BandAid; if we get sunburnt, we know we need to use aloe vera; if we get an allergy, we might take some medicine.  Similarly, we can learn how to take care of our mental health, too, by learning strategies, certain skills, and certain techniques to take care of ourselves better. 

Just how we invest time and resources to learn and know about how to take care of our skin, we can do that for our mental health, too. And sometimes, we might need professional help in taking care of both.

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Learn more:

• Mental Health Is More Than Just Wellness or Illness (Mitsu)
• What Skills Does Therapy Teach? (Mitsu)
• Why Are There Different Types of Therapy? (Mitsu)
• The Importance of Mental Health (VeryWell Mind)
• Caring For Your Mental Health (National Institute of Mental Health)

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Raksha Rajesh (M.Sc., M.Phil., CRR No. A80195) is a clinical psychologist licensed by the Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI). She has 5+ years of experience in helping people from diverse backgrounds build skills to understand and manage their emotions.