me_irl

It completely threw me off when the official statistic was 25% for those with any diagnosable mental illness. 75% of people just don’t have a problem with interacting with the world around them.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness

The key word is "diagnosable" though, isn't it. What is the normal levels of feeling down, temporary depression, undiagnosed, etc.? That number seems low, especially since there are so many mental illnesses.

The better questions would be, are you personally having a good day? If not, are you on your way to having better days or finding a way to having better days? If that's not possible, is there a way to make your day as good as it can be?
- TL;DR: The world wasn’t made for the minority that classify as having a mental illness.
  
  My answer to this question comes with the inherent bias of not being in a minority myself, but I have personally found myself at the bottom for the majority of my life due to my own actions. Things only got better when I changed.
  
  That is not to say change is easy or accessible for everyone or even most. I know many people in my life that I don’t know what to recommend for them in the current state of affairs other than to prepare for it to get worse. But on the flipside, I know far more that whine and complain about their current situation and have every opportunity to change it. Those are the people that I feel fit calmly in the 75%.
  
  I have a crackpot theory with only vague experience to back it up, but here it is: Have you ever been to Vegas? Or really any major city mall? When you go there, if it’s a good mall, the only ones still around are fashion malls. And you’ll see hundreds of people walking around with bags upon bags worth of stuff. There’s just all this money moving all around. Every. Single. Day. Who are these people? When you start paying attention, the vast majority just seem to blend in with the rest, taking on almost a general image of what might be “a person”.
  
  But then there’s almost a separate crowd from them. Just like you reading this now. You can pick them out. I can’t give you words, but they are clearly people who have been through THE SHIT. There’s those of us who have and those of us who haven’t. Almost everyone I’ve encountered on Lemmy has been through THE SHIT. We all know what it is. And the moment you find yourself I an accidental conversation with someone who hasn’t, it’s immediately noticeable.
  
  The 75% may potentially have a mental illness as we would think about it. But they’ve never had something bring it far enough to the surface for anyone to cast them out for it. I truly feel that a lot of what Hollywood portrays in the terrible characters they create comes down to a reflection of real people. Without THE SHIT, you don’t have a nearly as much of a chance of truly empathizing with those that have.
  
  Feel free to find a massive flaw in my theory. I’m not a sociologist in the slightest.
  
  Edit: hit save too soon
  
  To circle back, it was only after coming out of it and realizing that I had to change and that the system never would that I managed to bring myself out of my 10-year depression. Not is just in the form of masking and managing my emotions more effectively. Not everyone gets that opportunity due to the oppressiveness of the society around them.

I cannot believe that "healthy" isn't simply just living with a tolerable amount of pain, instead of an intolerable amount of pain.

This. A lot of people have problems that they're just better at hiding or coping with.

There will always be stories of normal, seemingly happy people who reach a breaking point one day—having a mental break under stress, quitting their job out of the blue, attempting or committing suicide, harming or killing someone, etc. And while folks want to pinpoint something that must have caused this sudden shift in behavior, it's never just that "one thing." It's a compounding burden of ignored warnings and masking. They give the impression of everything being alright, until it is suddenly and dramatically not.

Basically, you never know what battles someone is fighting, which is why it's important to treat everyone with dignity and respect, without just assuming someone must have it easy in life because they look like they have everything figured out. They're just in their tolerance threshold.
...it isn't?
- it is, everyone has their issues.
  
  except billionaires of course

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Everybody else's lives are better.
-- Everybody

Normal is a range, not a point. Normal people still have anxieties and pains, there's just a range that is considered normal anxiety, normal blues, everyone gets injured, sick, sad, or anxious some of the time. If you can still live your life most of the time it's just considered normal and healthy.

I am pretty sure it would be abnormal to be able to feel amazing every day of your life, no matter what was going on.

And nobody wants to answer the phone, that's a bad measure. But I do wake up feeling physically ok to good most every day, and get enough sleep, exercise, and family emotional and household support to do alright mentally most all the time too. Now at least. It's not always been that way.

So I guess I'd define healthy as being ABLE to be physically and mentally healthy when the right outward conditions exist. If you have a good relationship, enough time for sleep and exercise and sex, a nutritious and enjoyable diet. Not that you can be healthy no matter what's going on in your life, that's a ridiculous standard.

You know how images of averaged faces can be beautiful?

Same with humans. Few adults are heathy in every way. Most humans have 1 or more issues, the issues just average out to a mythical normal person.

I'll believe it when you show me a genuinely 100% healthy individual. (and by the way, also provide a definitive definition for "mentally healthy")

Well what is a mental illness? Historically you had an illness if something caused you to not function properly at the things society expected you to function in. You can't remember things clearly anymore and it affects your career or social life? You now are considered to have the mental illness of dementia. Are you just slightly forgetful but can still function fine? You are not ill, instead that forgetfulness is just a character trait of yours. And it goes on like this. Back in the day the expectations to marry the opposite sex and have children was huge so being gay was considered a mental illness. Today it's more accepted and being gay is just part of who you are (in some places at least). And it goes on like this.

I think not much has changed in this regard. If a certain mental affliction doesn't affect your social or work life in a meaningful way it's not really considered an illness. So if you take this as a definition of being mentally healthy there are certainly lots of people out there who have no affliction which seriously hurt their current social or work life. However this of course doesn't mean that these people are completely free from any mental affliction, it just means these mental afflictions are not considered serious in today's society.

And these things change all the time as society's expectations change. Back in the day when only a small minority could read and write there was not a diagnosis for dyslexia. Now that reading ability is expected of everyone in today's society we have defined dyslexia. As new societal expectations come and go the list of diagnosable illnesses will certainly have things getting removed and added. Let's say theoretically some people can't handle zero gravity, today this is not relevant for the vast majority of people so there is not any diagnosis for such an illness. But if more and more people are expected to live in zero G then such a diagnosis would be sure to be defined if such an affliction exists.

Is this definition reasonable? Well that's a completely different question. But as I see it this is how it is generally defined right now.

Health is a spectrum. Perfect health and being free from illness/sickness are different states. At least according to this guy and some other people.

I would argue perfect health doesn't exist, but there's a certain point people can reach where they are perceived as healthy by others. Especially when it comes to mental health. Really comes down to the question of what "health" means and if treatment is necessary.

edit: my personal definition of unhealth is the inability of an organism to regulate itself.

Even Chris Traeger on Parks and Rec ultimately brushed up with anxiety. Nobody’s immune to the problems of life

!chronicillness@lemmy.world

A lot of that comes from being healthy, though. Sleep well, exercise, eat well. Watch your anxiety drop, focus go up, motivation go up, happiness go up. The more you do it, the easier it gets, so then the more it improves, so the easier it gets, etc.

I think so many people would be surprised that many of their life's problems and self-diagnosis or concerns of a mental problem can be resolved by exercising so they get an eppetite and are actually tired for bed time, rather than living with the fog and anxiety of doing nothing and not being able to get good rest.

It's hard to sleep well when intrusive thoughts keep replaying your most traumatic memories, or when anxiety has your heart pounding too hard to fall asleep. It's hard to exercise when just standing up feels like you are lifting ten times your weight and taking a shower would be an insurmountable achievement. And food? Sometimes pouring a bowl of cereal or ordering a pizza are all you have the mental wherewithal to accomplish.
You sound like RFK Jr. Yes most people in our modern world don't get enough exercise, but it's not a panacea. Exercise, sunlight, and clean eating alone won't do more than nudge most chronic illnesses. Hell, the latest on ME/CFS is that exercise can actually worsen symptoms.

"All I needed was exercise and/or a healthier diet and I felt great!" folks were not truly ill to begin with, just slacking. There's a huge difference, and insinuating otherwise is a giant slap in the face to those who've tried these things (and likely so much more) and are still struggling with debilitating health issues. To use a car analogy, regular oil changes and premium fuel won't compensate for a broken axel.
The recently published link between mental health and insulin resistance is a really exciting area of research. Of course that is totally controlled by diet (insert debate about what a healthy diet is here)
"Have you tried... Exercising?" is quite a tone-deaf response to these matters at this point.

Of course it's correlated with healthy living. Of course it helps maintain a healthy lifestyle with wonderful benefits for your mental health and anxiety. Sure!

However, when you're not there (yet), and you have no idea how to get "there", having someone go "Well actually, it's not that hard, lol, just start exercising" isn't helpful. To build such a healthy pattern requires more care and nuance than just the knowledge that exercising helps, or the willpower to drag yourself through the first few days of whatever initial exercise routine, hoping it magically kickstarts this wonderful, new life.

This means they don't really process the world around them. They see and live in it, but don't feel it. It's a sensitivity/intelligence thing. Must be a lovely life, it's much easier. Every rose has its thorns.

I'd have to disagree. I'm over 60 and basically healthy. I'm slightly overweight now and take one pill a day to control an enlarged prostate but that's it.

Now I absolutely process the world. I'm married, I had three children and have suffered the usual share of family dramas / estrangements. I've been made redundant, run my own business, struggled to make ends meet, seen my wife suffer health issues (brain tumor, ovarian cyst, knee damage, etc.) and made and lost friends. I'm atheist, socialist and paid both a mortgage and rent. I am currently enraged by the rise of fascism and terrified for my children's future but I wouldn't call that mental illness. I still sleep at night, get up in the morning, try to live a good life and make a difference in my community. I've never been in therapy and I have had times of deep sadness and times of immense joy.

I doubt very much that I'm unusual.