Good mental health is integral to good public health and is hugely important when it comes to quality of life and resilience. Within a community, good mental health can protect against everything from physical illnesses and unhealthy lifestyle choices to social inequalities, violence, and poverty.
Nor is mental health solely concerned with mental illnesses. This is because mental health also covers more general well-being principles. Learning about this can be part of a training course for mental health workers or as a growing awareness amongst the wider community.
Promoting mental wellbeing
As many people taking part in mental health training courses Newport and elsewhere in the UK are finding out, promoting and facilitating mental wellbeing is not just about preventing or treating mental illness. It is looking at overall well-being, including factors such as happiness, life satisfaction, good relationships, optimism, and confidence levels.
Again, mental well-being can deliver many social and health benefits. You can read more about these on the Faculty of Public Health website here.
Positive psychological functioning can underpin everything from social equality to healthy lifestyles, protecting against disease and enhancing resilience. It can also help to prevent the type of mental illnesses that can cause everything from unemployment and social inequality to violence and other troubling behaviours that can impact wider communities, not just the individuals themselves.
A Wider Approach
Many healthcare professionals and others are now recognising more and more the need to focus on community mental health, whether that means offering mental health training courses in Newport or actively working in communities across the UK.
They are realising that mental well-being can offer many positive benefits, while mental illnesses can sometimes be prevented before becoming too common, too costly, and too disabling.