We assume we know the meaning of healthy. Some psychologists claim that there is no contrast between healthy and unhealthy, there is only a continuum. In that case, I suppose a bad grade doesn't ever mean failure, but only a grade that is lower than someone else's grade. The idea of having only a continuum sounds a bit suspicious. In that case, you can be declared mentally healthy if you are better than schizophrenic. I hope I grade better than that. Just because I don't have multiple personalities shouldn't mean that I am healthy. So what is it to meet the grade of being mentally healthy? That is a great question we are going to explore and test.
In October 2015, I finished a book titled, Mental Health for Everyone: For Making Good Choices. In the title is a summary in seconds of what the book is all about. All of the words are relatively clear though a person might not know the precision that the title has in it's choice of words. It is my shortest statement of the point of the book.
There is one word though that is not real clear as to definition. It grabs attention, but alludes our grasp. It is the word - healthy. It is, according to a dictionary, to be in good health or to be not sick or injured. How do we measure good health when it comes to the mind - the mental part of ourselves?
I think it is actually fairly clear to me now. I think the grading system in the school hints at a pretty good way to score mental health. You can fall into a continuum of healthy to a degree, but there is also a point where we say someone has passed a lowest measure or someone has failed to make that lowest grade.
I think a person can have a passing grade of health while not being fully healthy. Likewise one can have a failing grade of unhealthy even while they are not fully unhealthy. In school, I was lucky to make the passing grade a number of times, but that didn't mean I was necessarily as mentally healthy as my grades seemed to indicate.
Here is the most dramatic example in my life. While I was getting on the Dean's list in college, my mind was suffering not thriving. I won't bore people with the details, but if the measure of being on the Dean's List means high intelligence or smarts, then why did it happen that at the very time I reached a pinnacle of smarts that my mind was traveling in the opposite direction at the same time? A smart mind should be a help towards health and not be a hindrance, right?
Since Sept 2014, I have known what caused my mind to begin to fail the grade even while getting high grades. I didn't have a way of thinking that fit my mind's natural way of thinking. Some of the way that I had been taught to think, didn't bring peace of mind, but anguish of mind. I was thinking in ways that were too heavy, too restless, too difficult, and too foggy to find peace of mind. It was too hard. Or sometimes too things to travel to the opposite extremes. .
Then when I sat down to write about mental health for 2 months in August and September of 2014, peace of mind for me came together in 4 diagrams that to this day give me more peace than I ever had previously. The peace of mind I have now matches more with being a cheerful five year old.
The central idea of being mentally healthy is that one has to reach a certain level and column on my 4 x 4 diagrams on page xvi to be healthy. I call it the rule of 76%. You have to get past just 3 x 3 (75%). Likewise I think a passing grade in each level or column could also be the rule of 76%.
There is one other aspect of my book that is very important. Martin Luther King once said the first step was more important than being able to see the rest of the staircase, if my memory serves me right. My book says that is not healthy. What is healthy is taking that first step knowing at least in a shadowy view where the stairs take you in the end. In this case the books says we start at square 1 as an interval and end at square 64.
Now, not all of us are called to lead at or get to interval 64. We can stop ourselves somewhere before that point. But what is not optional is the need for respect for those who keep going on to higher and higher heights. No respect for the higher intervals is not any more healthy than a bench presser not being respectful of another weight lifting who lifts more and with more repetitions.
So that is my definition of healthy. Hit 76% to pass as healthy. 75% or less would be unhealthy. Likewise someone who says necessary knowledge all ends at high school (or God forbid in kindergarten) is unhealthy. Let's communicate clearly through numbers.
We need real mental health in the United States. We need to measure it accurately. In my next entry, I will offer a test of mental health. Thank you.
To Your Better Mental Health,
Jon
