There’s an interesting post today at the always excellent Science Based Medicine. Essentially it’s a discussion of a recent critical review of contemporary psychiatric practice. What’s interesting to me is that it both debunks a number of common myths, and indicates that many important questions about mental health still lack clear answers.

I would suggest that this is a subject it is well-worth reading up on. The statistics quoted in the review are shocking – 46% of adults diagnosed with a mental illness some time during their life, and 1 in 76 Americans so disabled by mental illnesses that they qualify for government disability benefits.

It is, however, not something to be frightened of. All of us live in a world with significant rates of cancer, heart disease and strokes. We accept that serious physical problems can arise, but there is a great deal we can do to help ourselves and minimise the risks. The same is true for mental health – except that no-one wants to talk about the problem, how to deal with it or what the risks are. Ignorance breeds fear, fear breeds avoidance, avoidance breeds ignorance.

I’m not going to get deeply into discussing the points of the article, except to say that what’s clear to me is that one of the best things for any person’s mental health is good old-fashioned personal responsibility. It strikes me that even if you know very little about what is going on with you physically, a good doctor can piece it together for themselves. What is going on with you mentally is another matter. The problems are much more subjective, and much more personal. The doctor or therapist needs your help to discover what’s really going on.

So what can you do? Lots of things, many of them discussed on this blog. Where I would start is to read a few books, namely:

“Emotions Revealed” by Paul Ekman. You probably don’t need the whole thing in detail, but enough of a skim to understand what humans feel and why they feel it will do you a world of good in understanding one of the most important forces at work inside you.

“Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman. The other side of the internal coin is your thinking, and Seligman gives a robust and workable guide to beginning to understand and manage your own thoughts.

“Flourish” and “Authentic Happiness” by Martin Seligman. Two more by Seligman, who I admire greatly for first laying out an understanding of happiness in ‘Authentic Happiness’, and subsequently identifying it as incomplete and improving it in ‘Flourish’. These two will give you a lot of basic building blocks for the kind of preventative measures that can make mental illness less likely.

The bottom line is this. How much do you know about how to look after your physical health, and how much time, effort and attention do you devote to caring for it? How does this compare to your mental health? Do you even feel comfortable asking that question? If you’re seeing an imbalance, please understand that coming to understand yourself better can actually be interesting and fun. Start with the books, and you’ll soon be a whole lot healthier and happier.