Mental Health and Happiness

This week saw World Mental Health Day, and as you might already know (My Next Chapter…) it’s an area that I’m very passionate about. So I wanted to do a little post on the subject, but since there are so many places that you can find mental heath information, facts, statistics etc, I thought I’d put a bit of a twist on it.

Therefore instead of talking specifically about mental illness, this post is going to be about happiness! This not only links into the whole ethos of my blog, but is an area of research that I’m studying for my MSc (it’s called Positive Psychology for any of you interested!), so I thought I’d give you a really brief overview of how it can relate to you!

Psychologists have found that there are a whole range of things we can do to increase our happiness levels. Although around 50% of our variance in happiness is related to our genetics and 10% due to income and environment, that means that around 40% of our variation in happiness is a result of the activities we do and the choices we make – we have the chance to make a massive difference to how happy we are!

There are so many things that you can do to increase your happiness, and I’m sure that everyone would like to be a little bit happier. So just as you might go to the gym for your physical health, these can be done to help your mental health! You might even be doing some of the activities already, for example exercising, having social connections or showing kindness. Others might be things that you could incorporate easily into your lives – it seems like everyone has heard of mindfulness by now, and there are loads of other activities, like thinking about what you’re grateful for, increasing optimism and reflecting on your favourite memories.

Of course, if you’re struggling with your mental health, you should get help. There are so many ways to do that and it’s incredibly important.

However mental illness or not, increasing your happiness is something that you can do!!
Let me know in the comments if you’d like more of these types of posts in the future, perhaps more in depth about Mental Health, Happiness, Psychology etc. I’m definitely not claiming to be an expert but I do have some knowledge in this area and love writing this sort of thing!

For more information you could look at : http://www.actionforhappiness.org/ (happiness) or http://www.mind.org.uk/ (mental health advice)

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Email – gemmahappycorner@gmail.com