How Environment and Society Impact Healing and Recovery Journey with a Mental Health Problem

    As a mental health enthusiast, I am firmly convinced that an individual’s surroundings and the society at large have a great significance on their recovery and healing process from a mental health crisis. Even though society is always oblivious to the impacts of their responses and behaviours on those suffering from various mental health problems, they contribute to more than half of the healing process. Referencing my own experience, my entire healing process is attributed to the societal treatment alongside their responses towards me during the peak seasons of my mental health crisis. The psyche wrestling with the incongruity of how I wanted society to view me alongside how they actually viewed me led to the constant developing and re-developing of habits that, in turn, significantly improved  my condition. After experiencing the impact of the surrounding environment on my recovery process, I developed a list of certain key factors to consider for acquiring the right environment for the recovery process.

    Most importantly, one should find an environment with some understanding of mental health matters. However, suppose this is impossible, as a survivor of a mental health problem, once you are reinstated to societies which have little or no understanding of mental health, it is your responsibility to explain to the immediate persons about your condition. You do not need to engage in vigorous advocacy during the early stages of the recovery process. However, immediate and closest people must be well enlightened about the problem to act as ambassadors to the extended society. Ensuring that the environment understands your condition to a certain level is essential since it saves you time and energy needed  to explain to everyone you come across about the problem. Besides, as someone suffering from a particular mental health problem, you must focus on re-inventing yourself by actively trying to restore the lost emotional energy during the crisis thus conserving your emotional and physical energy is critical. A mental health crisis occurs when an individual hits a point when their emotional intelligence cannot respond to tackle a situation anymore, so focusing on recharging emotional energy is key in the recovery process.

    An individual should also focus on saving the little emotional energy left after a crisis to avoid cases of relapse, which may be more intense than expected. This can be best managed by avoiding confrontation between them and their surrounding environment since it may manifest in a negatively counteractive manner. Achieving a smooth recovery period requires one to join the existing societal flow regarding their belief in the situation that occurred rather than trying to change the perceptions of those who hold negative and untrue versions of your condition. Just like the familiar adage, what you resist will always persist. However, the urge to make people understand your ordeal clearly never seizes and the best approach to decode your epic into your best way of view is to focus on your actions rather than talking. Your actions should intrinsically depict what you hold about your condition, and the societal understanding will be directed according to how you want it to be. The key is influencing their perception of you through actions and  not explanations.

    Another critical aspect of the environment to consider during the healing process is its proximity to the critical resources of personal development. A mental health crisis deprives one of their emotional, spiritual, and physical energies. The most preferable environment for recovery should thus be resourceful regarding three aspects. There is an absolute need for mind, soul and body re-defining after undergoing a mental health crisis. Therefore, the environment should avail resources like access to personal development books, spiritual nourishment spaces, and physical development systems. Of all these, the quick hack to having all the resources at a click is the ability to access the internet. The standard cliché that the world is a global community is possible because of the internet, where you can access all personal development materials. It is paramount for an individual recovering from a mental health crisis to access the internet directly or through their caregivers to achieve a seamless recovery process.

    The power of the surrounding environment and society is therefore  immeasurable regarding an individual’s healing and recovery process from a mental health crisis. From my understanding and experience with mental health problems, maladaptive behaviour is another best term for a mental health condition. At closer scrutiny, the reactions of an individual that lead to a diagnosis with a particular mental health disorder are primarily rooted in their environmental conditions, which in turn impact their emotional being and finally manifest in their physio-psychological responses. This, therefore, creates a new adaptive mechanism that, in most cases, is incoherent to the existing societal norms. Therefore, the significance of society in the healing and recovery process is evident as it forms a variable that creates a balance for identifying whether one is experiencing a mental health problem or not. It is, therefore, paramount for an individual to carefully consider the environment in which they intend to spend their time during the recovery and journey.

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Mental Health and Fitness Enthusiast