World Mental Health Day

The objective of World Mental Health Day is to raise people’s awareness of mental health and encourage them to make efforts in support of mental health.

Learn about related issues
Anxiety
When facing pressure, difficulties, challenges and dangers, we may encounter worries, nervousness, uneasiness, irritability, fear and other emotions. This is "anxiety", which is one of the most common emotions of human beings.

Moderate anxiety is beneficial to us. It can help us maintain a certain level of tension and stimulate internal motivation. At the same time, it can improve our reaction speed and alertness.

After facing challenges and overcoming these difficulties through appropriate behaviors, anxiety will also be relieved, which is a normal reaction. However, if the severity of anxiety is obviously inconsistent with the objective facts or situations, or the duration is too long, it may be pathological anxiety, such as anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorder

Anxiety disorder is mainly manifested as nervousness, anxiety and restlessness without clear objective causation, presenting autonomic nervous dysfunction symptoms such as palpitations, tremors, sweating, frequent urination, insomnia, and athletic restlessness.

The first national epidemiological survey of adult mental disorders in China found that the prevalence of anxiety disorder was the highest, with a lifetime prevalence of 7.57 percent and a period prevalence (in 12 months) of 4.98 percent.

Common anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, specific phobia and separation anxiety.

Depression
We usually use "depression" to describe negative feelings. Everyone may encounter some unpleasant or stressful things in life, and as a consequence feel depressed.

This kind of depression is usually caused by external events. When the situation is over, the mood will recover, and it will not have a significant impact on daily work, life or interpersonal relationships.

Depression is an emotional disorder characterized by low mood. It is a disease, mainly manifested as low mood, slow thinking and decreased willpower.

Some patients also have somatic symptoms, such as insomnia, loss of appetite or weight loss, headache, fatigue, dizziness and various physical discomforts.

Negative emotions hurt the body
Prolonged exposure to negative emotional states, such as anger, sadness, fear, depression, hostility, suspicion and self-blame, will have a negative impact on people's physical and mental health.

Negative emotions can have a certain impact on various organs of the body, especially the immune system, cardiovascular system, endocrine system, nervous system, respiratory system and digestive system. The possible diseases caused by negative emotions include oral ulcers, hypertension, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, gastrointestinal disease, heart disease, gynecological disease and skin disease.

In addition, these bad emotions will also bring negative results to mental health, which may lead to anxiety, depression, poor social interaction and reduced happiness.

Improve your mood

Exercise
Exercise is an important way to manage negative emotions. Regular exercise can improve people’s state of minds and prevent mental illness.

Running, ball games, walking, shadowboxing, calisthenics, swimming, yoga and cycling are all good choices. You can exercise for 40-60 minutes, three times a week. You can choose the sports according to your own preferences.

Mindfulness exercise for relaxation
Studies show that focusing on current thoughts, emotions and feelings without judgement can alleviate physical and psychological discomfort symptoms and help prevent their recurrence.

Mindfulness exercise makes us consciously relax the body and slow down our breathing. These body reactions may send some signals to the brain and improve the working state of the brain through hormones and effects on the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system, thus playing a role in fighting negative emotions.

Adjust cognition
Bad emotions are often caused by individuals' distorted cognition and assessment of events. When you are in a bad mood, try to re-examine the ideas in your mind, and then seriously consider whether there are some errors in these ideas, or whether they are not consistent with reality.

Seek support
Seeking support is also a very effective way to regulate emotions. When you experience bad emotions, you can talk to people you trust about the bad emotions deep down, and get support in time.

If the bad mood lasts for a long time and in such high severity that it seriously affects your daily life, causing insomnia, physical discomfort, a significant reduction in learning efficiency, or frequent erroneous thinking, and you cannot go to school, work, and communicate with people normally, you should seek professional psychological support.