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Mental health awareness month May 2020 Series, Episode 1 (What is mental health)

Dr. Benedict Akimana: Welcome. Let's talk about your mental health. Your mental health is as important as your physical health. So, it is high time you prioritized it too.

What is mental health?

Mental health is a state of wellbeing in which you are able to realize your abilities, cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively, and make a contribution to your community.

One's mental health starts from conception all through their lifetime. Therefore, mental illness affects everyone: children, adults, and the elderly. We shall talk about the different mental disorders during these series, how to prevent them, and how to manage them.

But first, what causes mental illness? It is a combination of three things: Biological, psychological, and environmental and social factors.

What are the biological factors?

These are the abnormalities in the brain chemicals or neurotransmitters. Either these chemicals are produced at high rate than needed or they are produced at a lower rate than needed or in higher amounts or lower amounts.

Genetics is another factor. We know that mental illness runs in families and can be passed on. Infections, brain defects, brain injuries–traumatic brain injuries, birth trauma and substances.

As one grows, they form a mental framework according to their experiences, and these determine how they view the world and interpret certain events. What a child goes through as they're growing up helps them view the world, and we call this the schema – things like childhood trauma, emotional-physical-sexual trauma, child neglect, social or environmental factors like dysfunctional family, death of a loved one, death of a parent, divorce, catastrophic events, abusive relationship, substances, and all these other things that happen in life – all these three factors, the biological, psychological, and social aspects combine to cause mental illness.

In the next episode, we shall talk about your mental health during this COVID pandemic.

Thank you for watching and prioritizing your mental health.