Adolescence and the early years of adulthood are a time for changes in life. Changing schools, changing friends, leaving home, starting university or even a new job. Many many things can occur. For some or many, these are exciting times. But, for some, they can also bring out stress and anxiety. In some cases,  these feelings can build up and affect your mental health.

And we constantly contribute to that even without noticing. Some “small” things can have a big impact. When you call a person fat or skinny, even though you aren’t serious about it.

That might be unknowingly hurtful to them, this bad feeling could result in increasing their anxiety levels.

Mental Health should not be a taboo.

You may think that mental health is something far from you, or it’s “an exaggeration”, but it’s more common than you think. A mental illness causes disturbances in thinking, behavior, energy or emotion that make it difficult to cope with the ordinary demands of life.

And there’s no right answer to what lead someone to become mentally ill. It can come from many things.

Research is starting to uncover the complicated causes of these diseases. It can include genetics, brain chemistry, brain structure, experiencing trauma and/or having another medical condition, like heart disease.

These are the most common mental health conditions, which you probably heard about before:

1. Anxiety Disorders – More than 18% of adults each year struggle with some type of anxiety disorder, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder (panic attacks), generalized anxiety disorder and specific phobias.

2. Mood Disorders – Mood disorders, such as depression and bipolar depression, affect nearly 10% of adults each year and are characterized by difficulties in regulating one’s mood.

How can we look after it?

It’s important to take care of ourselves and others, to get the most from life. Here are some of the ways that you can start from today itself:

1. Talk and Listen

Talk about your feelings, it helps you to stay in good mental health and deal with times when you feel troubled. Don’t forget to listen to others as well 🙂

2. Exercise

Regular exercise can boost your self-esteem and can help you concentrate, sleep, and look and feel better. Exercise keeps the brain and your other vital organs healthy and is very important towards improving your mental health.

3. Take a break

A change of environment is good for your mental health. Take a break and do something you feel good about. For instance: Volunteer, when you feel very unproductive about yourself.

4. Ask for help

We are humans, we all sometimes get tired or overwhelmed by how we feel or when things don’t go according to plan. If things are getting too much for you and you feel you can’t cope, ask for help.

5. Do something you’re good at

What activities do you lose yourself in? Play a loud music, bang your head to the beats, jump to reach the top of the world, enjoying yourself helps you to beat the stress 🙂

Even after trying a certain number of things, you still feel mentally tired or ill. You should go to a counselor. Yes, some people make fun about it and might call you crazy, but, that’s not true.

Imagine when you have flu, all you need is some dosage of medicines, and you’re back to healthy living. The same way our brain needs counseling sometimes and it’s back to the track, in fact sometimes we do better then we were doing initially.

We pick ourselves up, only after falling.

Mental Health Awareness is something much needed in today’s generation. It’s a delicate yet much-needed topic to be talked about. Sometimes the best we can do to help people going through a mental illness is listening and letting them know how to get some support. Do you know other ways that we can all do our part, breaking up the “taboo” status of Mental Health? Share your thoughts with us.

If you also want to get closer and more involved in supporting actions like these, check out our Volunteer Exchanges options.

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Written by

Anisha Bhawanani is graduated in Marketing and Finance and loves writing. She is a happy go lucky girl with a head full of dreams, very passionate about traveling and exploring different cultures. One day she wants to win a man booker prize.