What is "mental health"?

“Mental health is a term used to describe either a level of cognitive or emotional wellbeing or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.

The World Health Organization states that there is no one "official" definition of mental health. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how "mental health" is defined.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health)

I have to say this gives me some comfort - perhaps I’m not as unqualified to express my own ideas on mental health as I thought. But I can see the problem that arises from my comfort. There would have to be at least one solution for every definition. And definitions being dime-a-dozen, that would have to leave anyone with a mental condition seriously bewildered.

I like the idea of cognitive and emotional wellbeing. It’s something I can grasp easily and apply to me. It also brings the concept into my experience too. I’ve never been “diagnosed” with any specific disorder, but I can certainly relate to feeling out of control, self doubt, even paranoia. Mental illness, then, isn’t so foreign after all.

The question is, how to react to another person who talks about their mental illness, or displays behaviour which I interpret as signs of illness. That’s where we start to feel uncomfortable. But in the end I guess we’re all just “brothers on the journey”. We need to meet as individuals with problems and issues to face, and it’s a whole lot easier if we can share those burdens with another person who just cares about us.

What is Spirituality?

The New Church, in which I was raised and have remained all my life, tends to turns to one particular quotation from the work of Emanuel Swedenborg to answer this question: "All religion has relation to life and the life of religion is to do good." Spirituality is about the life we lead here and now - our relationship with others, our moral and ethical standpoint, our conscience, our actions and their motivations.

I see this in the second of the two great commandments which Jesus articulated, although in Luke's gospel, it's the "certain lawyer" to whom the parable of the good samaritan is then given as an illustration: "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,' and 'your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10:27)

To love God, is another dimension, which really doesn't seem to be present in the "life of religion is to do good", at least not at first, but here's how I think it works. Swedenborg also describes God as Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. To love God, then is to love a definition of love and wisdom, of goodness and truth which is above and beyond my own narrower definitions of goodness and truth. It is to acknowledge an Absolute Reality beyond the perception of my own mind: I don't know everything. That's important for mental health, because the mind which cannot acknowledge that it MIGHT be wrong, cannot learn anything new and it cannot accept correction.

I think anyone can see that, the problem is applying it to MY life. It's easy to see how someone else might be out of touch with reality, but it's much harder to recognise that I might have the wrong end of the stick too.

Our grasp on reality is the foundation of all our actions in the world, and we measure our actions against it. So we treat others in ways which accord with our own perceptions, when such behaviour would appear irrational to someone else. To "love the neighbour as you love yourself", and to do it with a love for God is to see the neighbour through the Lord's eyes, and act accordingly.

So spirituality is to do good. But to get a grip of Reality first.