How do you do a mental health check? Or perhaps the better question is do you monitor it with any kind of intentionality or regularity? There’s no accusation in that, just probing at a point that sometimes gets ignored. The reality is that our mental wellness is just as important as our physical health. The term itself can mean different things, which is perhaps part of why many people just bypass this part of wellness care. So, let’s just take a minute and talk about that.
The term mental health is defined, according to dictionary.com, as the “psychological well-being and satisfactory adjustment to society and to the ordinary demands of life.”
Typically, mental health refers to disorder—the dis-order we experience when our personal perceptions are incongruent with the demands of everyday life. Truthfully, we all experience dis-order from time to time and left unchecked such misalignment can lead to greater problems.
Mental health is often stigmatized in our culture, causing many to suffer rather than seek help. This stigma of diagnosed disorders often paralyzes people, causing them to hide and pretend all is well. Getting past our misconceptions of what a disordered mind is will serve us well in learning how to pursue mental wellness.
What if there were some practical tools we could use to help us know when we need to make changes and adjustments or if it might be good to reach out for help? The pursuit of overall wellness begins as we admit we need to care this aspect of our health.
Join us on this week’s episode of the Pastor and the Counselor as Pastor Ryan Brown, Jon Burchard, and Corryn Vento (In Him Christian Wellness) talk about how to find your own personal baseline and how to establish some practical habits that help develop a lifestyle of wellness.
Mental Health Check UpWritten by Maureen Brown
Maureen Is our Worship and Communications Pastor. She has served New Life Community alongside Pastor Ryan for 19 years. She is passionate about Jesus and His Church, which is why she does what she does. Maureen has been leading worship, teaching, and mentoring her entire adult life. She graduated in 1996, from Emmanuel Bible College with a Bachelor of Religious Education in Professional Studies with a double minor in Christian Education and Music and then married Ryan—the love of her life. Maureen is a blogger so she brings a special set of gifts that are well used in the area of Communications here at NLC.