Mental Hygiene: Prevention is the cure.

Written by Shannon Carleton

We’re in the midst of a growing public health crisis; mental health statistics are astronomically high and people are more lonely than ever before. 

No matter what age, the data shows the same thing. We are in a cycle where youth lack examples of well-adjusted adults that effectively manage stress and know how to handle high emotions. Parents bring home work and life stressors and showcase to their children a wide range of behaviors that are not conducive to mental wellness. 

If the current situation is left unchecked, it will continue to grow exponentially. There are different forms of crisis intervention available now. Though traditional methodologies help, the key is to change our thinking from reactive to proactive measures. 

We need to teach students (and their parents) the habits, skills, and mindsets needed to lead a well-adjusted life. 

Oral Hygiene: A Public Health Crisis

Building effective regular habits is key to emotional resilience and prevention. Look at the daily habit of brushing one’s teeth. This widespread practice wasn’t normalized in the United States until the Army enforced daily brushing by World War II (WWII).

During  World War I, recruits had such bad oral hygiene that dental disease was considered a national crisis. In fact, over 24% of recruits were turned away because of defective or deficient teeth,  Through education, supply distribution, and advertising, the Army was able to downgrade the issue by the end of WWII.

Even with good oral hygiene habits cases of emergency still happen. If you need a root canal, do you ignore it? No, the pain prompts you go to a specialist - the dentist -  and have it fixed before it worsens. Once the tooth emergency is fixed that doesn’t give one permission to stop good daily habits.

Today, we take good oral hygiene habits for granted because it has become standard in our society. The dental disease phenomenon that started as a public health crisis has been controlled and minimized through the spread of daily habits which have alleviated the personal and societal costs of emergency dental needs. 

This model can be applied to the current mental wellness crisis. Daily habits as a form of prevention mitigate an individual’s negative consequences and saves the larger society from unintended costs. 

Healthy habits build capacity against negative consequences. Think of your ability to handle stress as a battery. We don’t let our phones die; why would we let ourselves run out of stamina? When we are tired we are more susceptible to strong, negative emotions. Fatigue can also lead to physical illness which impairs our emotional resilience.

Good habits for building emotional resilience and mental wellness include basics like eating nutritious meals, sleeping, laughing, taking some time in nature, and spending time with friends. Think of the things that you may take for granted. Many times the simple pleasures in life are basic ways to build emotional resilience. 

More advanced techniques include mindset and thinking habits, like gratitude and positivity, that influence our feelings and behaviors in effective and goal-supporting ways. Practicing a mindset shift can be challenging. There is no “wrong” way when starting, and we often fail to recognize the small win of catching negative thoughts when they happen. Only through consistent, daily practice will positive thinking habits become an unconscious behavior.

All of these behaviors recharge us and allow our resilience batteries to expand. If your stress, anxiety, or depression are at the extreme, skills alone may not be enough to facilitate recovery. Emergencies require personalized care supported by good mental hygiene.

Swimming Lessons: Prevention with Stackable Skills

Skill building in a controlled environment is another way in which we can see the importance of prevention. The idea to teach people skills to avoid unwanted outcomes is not a new one. 

Teaching people how to swim is a perfect example. Children often love playing in water, but it can be incredibly dangerous. About 8 in 10 child drownings occur under parental supervision, but there is an 88% reduction of risk if the child takes swimming lessons. Some places offer free swimming lessons because of the importance of this skill, and at pools/beaches there are often lifeguards as a last line of defense. 

We teach swimming to prevent unwanted outcomes, like breathing water or drowning. We also teach these skills so that a person can become more comfortable and capable, and learn how to enjoy the new experience without fear. 

Skills are broken up and taught separately - like how to float and the efficient way to kick. Through this incremental process, we build upon our previous knowledge and understand how all the pieces fit together. Once there is a solid foundation and confidence is built, it’s easier to apply the skills in different contexts: like swimming in the ocean or deep sea diving. These applications are different from swimming in a pool because there are more uncontrollable environmental factors. 

It’s much more effective to learn how to swim in a controlled environment, where things are ok, not when we are already drowning. If we need a lifeguard to save us every time we are at the beach then we aren’t prepared to handle the environment and need to go back to building foundational skills. 

Just like swimming, it’s easier to learn preventative mental wellness techniques when we are young and building our foundational life skills. Students need these skills in school before they are overwhelmed by the stress and other environmental factors of adult life. The school years are also the time when they have a strong support system and a more controlled environment.

Preventative mental wellness skills include a foundation of developing self awareness, coping with stress and managing emotions. Until this foundation is built, efforts to encourage kids to be empathetic to others and make good decisions will be challenged. It’s hard to notice and help others in distress when we are struggling ourselves.

Mental wellness is a stackable set of skills and an understanding of how these skills fit together. By mastering the foundation students can start to learn how to broadly apply the skill set. Emotional resilience is built through understanding thinking habits or mindset and using them at the right moment. When that level of control is achieved, students have mastery that allows them to handle life with confidence, because lifeguards aren’t always there to save us. 

Mental Wellness: Prevention is Possible

Looking at mental health, the facts about the exponential rise in stress are alarming. It’s not widely understood that with mental health, prevention is the best cure. 

Using our previous examples of tooth brushing and swimming, we can see that prevention works. Tooth brushing started as a public health crisis, then evolved into normalized daily prevention habits. Teaching and practicing good mental wellness habits daily will help break the current stigma and start a cultural shift toward becoming well adjusted adults. 

Swimming lessons show us that mental wellness skills need to be broken into digestible pieces. Then when each individual skill is mastered, skills are stacked together and one learns how all the skills can be used together. Teaching in a safe environment allows one to feel more confident and capable while building skills.

Existing interventions within mental health are mostly reactive; we have crisis hotlines, commercials for drugs that help depression/anxiety, and we tell friends to talk to a therapist if they need help. These tactics are great for those who are past the prevention stage. 

It’s important when learning tactics like meditation to link back to the foundation of the practice. When this doesn’t happen, people don’t develop the ability to take a learned skill and apply it in different contexts. Strategies like understanding terminology and high level knowledge lack action that a person needs to apply the knowledge. It’s hard to impart theoretical knowledge without a corresponding skill set.

By integrating strategies and tactics together, preventative mental wellness can be learned more efficiently. Stress as a strategy can be viewed as an opportunity for growth because of the oxytocin and DHEA released in the brain.  The tactic “Excite and Delight” allows the switch from stress to confidence, using DHEA to capitalize on increased problem-solving skills and greater focus. 

A majority of the people don’t know the strategies and tactics to help themselves or their friends and family. Adolescents in particular are at a crucial developmental period, rooted firmly in emotional reasoning. Teaching the strategy shares the rationale behind the action, which allows an individual to acknowledge where the skills work, how to apply tactics, and what to expect. 

Mental wellness is at the foundation of a happy, successful life. Benefits of mental wellness include: knowing and being confident about your abilities, being able to cope with the inevitable stress of life, working productively, contributing to the community, and being able to benefit from the challenges of life by growing from the hardship. 

It’s important to acknowledge and validate a learner’s experience and situation. First, we need to learn how to cope. Once we understand our foundation, we can build upon it to improve our skills. Then we can share the strategies and skills with our friends and family. It’s like when you’re on an airplane, you put on your oxygen mask before you help others.

Daily Mental Hygiene

Mental health is a critical public health issue that won’t improve overnight. We are stuck in a cycle where we have not taught the skills needed to regulate overwhelming emotions. 

We know that through daily habits and by understanding how those habits work, we can set up our children and ourselves for success in life. It is through practice that these habits and skills will become second-nature. 

If we don’t master the art of taking care of ourselves, how do we expect to take care of others? It will take time but through recharging our resilience battery through practicing daily wellness and self-care we become better equipped to handle the ambiguities of life.

Society can only improve when we do.