Health - Mental Health

Mental Health

The World Health Organization describes mental health as "a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community".

Roughly a quarter of all adults 18 and over in the US suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. Mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the US and Canada. Examples of disorders include, schizophrenia, ADHD, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and autism.

Read more about this topic:  Health

Famous quotes containing the words mental health, mental and/or health:

    A major misunderstanding of child rearing has been the idea that meeting a child’s needs is an end in itself, for the purpose of the child’s mental health. Mothers have not understood that this is but one step in social development, the goal of which is to help a child begin to consider others. As a result, they often have not considered their children but have instead allowed their children’s reality to take precedence, out of a fear of damaging them emotionally.
    Elaine Heffner (20th century)

    see the shaky future grow familiar
    in the pinched, indigenous faces
    of these thoroughbred mental cases,
    twice my age and half my weight.
    We are all old-timers,
    each of us holds a locked razor.
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)

    Woman ... cannot be content with health and agility: she must make exorbitant efforts to appear something that never could exist without a diligent perversion of nature. Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)