What Is Mental Wellness? 

The term mental wellness considers psychological, physical, emotional, and social well-being. Looking at their entire self in this particular way helps people flourish. Mental wellness is not just relevant to people experiencing mental health problems, but it has relevance to everyone. 

Mental wellness is not the opposite of a mental health problem, such as anxiety or depression. While treating anxiety and depression puts people on a path forward, it does not indicate mental wellness. 

Mental wellness is identified by: 

• Feeling up to the challenges of day-to-day life. 

• Experiencing moments of pleasure and joy in relationships and activities. 

• Experiencing the satisfaction of life. 

• Experiencing positive feelings. 

• Having the resources to help deal with the circumstances facing you. 

Everyone has different resources and challenges. Our family, friends, community, living environment, and the circumstances around the world can all impact our emotional intelligence; therefore, mental wellness fluctuates with changing circumstances. However, when facing challenges, adults and young adults can receive help from tools and support to lean into their strengths and develop resilience: the ability to manage difficulties and move forward. 

Intentionally nurturing mental wellness helps improve long-term satisfaction and physical health and establishes healthy relationships. Caring for your mind is like caring for your body — both involve stretching and strengthening muscles to keep your entire self-strong and healthy. Nourishing your body helps improve your mental wellness and vice versa. Caring for yourself better equips you to help your child or another youngster. 

What Is a Mental Health Condition? 

Occasionally, it is natural to feel depressed and anxious. However, mental health professionals not only diagnose a mental health problem or disorder when they meet certain criteria, but they are also: 

• Consider specific symptoms. 

• The severity of the symptoms. 

• How long do the symptoms persist? 

• Whether the symptoms affect the functionality of day-to-day life. 

For example, severe depression can cause significant sadness, a sense of despair, or loss of enjoyment for at least two weeks. 

If you want more information about specific mental health problems, such as different forms of anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and more, visit the NIMH website. 

How to seek help? 

You might find it challenging to know when to seek help if your teenager needs it. We are here to help you identify the warning signs. 

How To Help Young Minds Thrive? 

Follow the five suggestions below to help the young thrive if they need help with mental wellness. They are: 

• Community: Discover ways to stay socially connected and strengthen your sense of belonging. 

• Sleep: Use the suggested tips to enhance sleep. 

• Physical activity: Explore methods to increase physical activity to boost mental well-being. 

• Nourishment: Check out the suggestions for eating well. 

• Nature Time: Discover convenient, calming ways to enjoy nature’s benefits. 

Core Skills 

Children need the skills to help them navigate life challenges when growing up, and part of mental wellness is to help them ensure they have them. The optimal time for learning the core skills of self-awareness, planning, focus, self-control, and flexibility is during adolescence and early adulthood. 

Young people who develop the skills to regulate their emotions and cope with challenges and stress thrive. Below, we provide some tips for helping your children develop their core skills. 

Awareness 

Broadly speaking, awareness is about observing people and situations around us. One version is self-awareness, also referred to as emotional awareness: recognizing our feelings, perspectives, and ideas about the world. This version of awareness helps us successfully navigate social relationships, such as developing friendships and working with others. 

Similar to various other skills, awareness skills are learned by observing others through practice. Awareness is an excellent skill to model your teenager to ensure they learn to use it themselves. Practicing it together also helps us. 

Six Ways That Help Different Versions of Awareness with Youngsters 

1. Going for walks or visiting new places and noticing what you see and hear. 

2. Modeling emotional awareness by identifying and naming your feelings at challenging moments. For example, you might comment, “I felt unheard at work today, even when my co-worker talked to me during a meeting.” 

3. Help youngsters link feelings to experiences. Verbalize your own experiences for them to model. For example, you can say “I feel clearheaded when taking a walk” or “I feel tense when we are stuck in traffic.” 

4. Observe whether one person’s feelings or actions are developing others. For example, point out how someone’s face lights up when they hear a compliment. 

5. Participate in community activities together. Practice may help young people understand the experiences of other people and help them discover that examples make a difference. 

6. Have rituals of checking in as a family during dinnertime by giving everyone an opportunity to talk about their best and worst parts of the day. Discuss ways in which you can get better as a family and treat each other well. 

Planning 

While caregivers focus on making plans for young children, learning to develop and carry forward concrete plans for themselves helps youngsters gain independence and practice similar skills, like time management and organization. 

Four strategies helpful for teenagers to develop talent skills include: 

1. When problem-solving skills arise, it helps to encourage youngsters to identify the issue and brainstorm possible solutions by allowing them to make mistakes. 

2. When children have a long-term project relating to research or college applications, it helps them to sit with them and discuss how they intend to get it done. Allow them to come up with ideas before pitching your own. 

3. Get them involved in family discussions and vacations. Allow them to make some decisions even if you don’t agree. 

4. Avoid micromanaging. Instead, consider setting ground rules like homework, sleep, and family expectations. Consider stepping in and leaving your child if they are having a challenging time meeting your expectations. 

Focus 

Focus is the compassion to concentrate on what is essential at a given moment. It can be particularly challenging in the present-day device-driven world. However, it is crucial to help youngsters learn how to focus despite digital distractions. 

Three tips to help with focus include: 

1. Discuss how digital and social media interfere with everyday life and help your child develop strategies to manage the distraction. Set screen times for yourself without being distracted by your cell phone when talking to your children or others. 

2. Specify screen-free times during meals or family time. 

3. Encourage hands-on activities without involving screens when preparing meals, building things, indulging in DIY activities, or projects. 

Self-Control 

When growing, you must ensure your child has the skills to help them navigate life’s challenges because it is part of mental wellness. Important periods for learning the core skills of awareness, focus, self-control, and flexibility are during adulthood and young adolescence. The best way to teach youngsters self-control is to model it yourself: 

Five Methods to Help Young People Learn Self-Control 

1. Learn and try using co-regulation to help calm challenging moments. 

2. Discuss feelings and share strategies to manage strong emotions, such as taking deep breaths, stepping away from a situation, or meditating. 

3. Debrief after upsetting, asking what everyone could have done differently. 

4. Help your child understand how their behavior affects others. 

5. Develop healthy conflict resolution by demonstrating appreciation of differences, tolerance, and how to show respect despite disagreement. 

Flexibility 

1. Help youngsters prioritize to make them decide which things can be postponed or missed when positive or negative feelings occur. 

2. Encourage spontaneity to assist youngsters to seek benefits out of opportunities, such as accepting a last-minute invitation to a movie with a friend. 

3. Model adaptability by pivoting your plans to change. Show methods of tolerating frustration and coping with upsetting feelings when circumstances change without warning. 

Transition points 

Transition points offer many chances for growth and new experiences. When youngsters begin to figure out who they are, independent of their family, they feel empowered to discover new things, engage in communication, and determine what brings them joy. They also gain a strong sense of empathy during these years. 

When going through puberty, moving into middle or high school, college, or work, shifting friend groups, and adding extracurricular activities, youngsters experience typical transitions between 11 and 21. Adolescents also experience changes that we find challenging to see as their brains develop in ways to emphasize social relationships and alter decision-making skills. Youngsters also become more willing to take risks, both wise and unhealthy. 

If you are trying to understand how emotional intelligence affects mental wellness, it helps to realize that the physical, cognitive, and emotional changes of adolescence make youngsters more susceptible to mental health issues. The growing adolescent brain responds differently to stress than adult brains. The changes can increase a young person’s susceptibility to developing stress-related anxiety and depression. The multiple complex transitions youngsters experience may explain why certain mental health disorders related to eating and bipolar disorder are initially recognized during adolescence. 

Mental wellness is about building a culture of understanding and support to make them feel valued, heard, and never alone in their struggles. Therefore, youngsters who have adults providing advice around them become better equipped to deal with the challenges of growing up and manage such issues comfortably.