On the 7th of April, we are celebrating the international day of health. The theme of the year is: « My health, my right ». Every human being has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. All of the different countries have a legal obligation to develop an health awareness, from the individual scale, to community scale.
Physical health, is how well your organs and body systems function; we all know how to take care of it: by doing health activities, sleeping, eating and drinking well, doing sport, maintaining our body. Despite that, which is also part of human rights, is mental health. It represents a state of well mental well-being emotionally, psychologically and socially. It affects how we think, feel, act and helps to determine how we handle stress, related to others and make choices.
Mental health is determined by a set of individual, social and structural pressure, it makes us contribute to community life. Our personal, social and economical development is related to it. Having a well mental-health, is not about the absence of mental illness. The reality is more complicated, subjective with different degrees, of different sufferings with social and clinical manifestations. It is important in every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence trough adulthood. As life goes on, factors can combine themselves to protect or compromise and then modify the state of our mental health. These are what we call: risks factors. To reduce the amount of people who are suffering from mental problems, protection and prevention factors must be used.
Individually, mental health is manifested by a combination of psychology and biology: emotions, substances and genetic. Those determinants can increase the vulnerability. Socially, economically, environmentally, this is more linked to poverty, inequalities, violence, and deprivation off good conditions. Those can increase the risks of having mental problems because the environment is linked to our mind. The risks manifesting during childhood are risks factors for later. Hopefully, protective factors throughout life strengthen our resilience. They represent our individual and social skills and attributes. These include emotions, social interactions, a good education, a serene environment and community cohesion. Risks and protection that influe our mental health depends of the society, from different scale: local threat is a risk for the human, family and community. Mondial threat, which is the economical and climatic situation today for example, is more linked to the population in the globally. It is really important to identify the individual, social and structural factors to reduce the risks. We need programs of promoting and prevention and they must intervene in education, work, justice, environment, social protection.
For now, what's most effective in all countries are social-emotional learning programs in schools. Not only must we protect and promote the mental well-being of all, we must also meet the needs of those who are suffering. At present, we have gaps in the treatment of common mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety. Countries need to find an innovative way. The World Health Organization has established a global action plan for mental health between 2013 and 2030. This is a call for all countries to help the mental health of the population. To achieve this, they have identified 3 factors: increasing the value given to it by individuals, communities and governments. Also to act on the physical, social and economic characteristics of family, school and professional environments in the community at large, in order to better preserve mental health and prevent problems. There's also the matter of strengthening mental health care. WHO focuses on the protection and promotion of human rights in a multi-sectoral approach. We want a world where mental health is recognized equally as physical health.