“Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.” –The Center for Disease Control
October 10th is World Mental Health Day. It is a day to bring awareness to and educate about mental health, getting the care you need, and its importance to one’s overall health and wellbeing.
For this year’s World Mental Health Day, we are highlighting the work of our partner, Impact Mental Health, a non-profit psychiatric clinic in Salt Lake City. Their mission is to provide “rapid, transformational whole-person psychiatric care to uninsured, low-income Utahns with serious mental illnesses” and “state-of-the-art integrative community-oriented clinical education for future mental health clinicians who can sustain the impact for future generations.”
Impact Mental Health Founder and Medical Director, Dr. Noel Gardner, joined us to share these tips on ways you can take care of your own mental health, every day.
Tips for Taking Care of Your Mental Health
1. Take Care of Yourself
“There are many important compliments of life that make a positive difference on our mental health. It’s good to get regular exercise and to get good sleep,” he says. “We know that doing those good things can make life better for people who have mental illnesses but also protect us from getting some of those illnesses.”
2. Get Help When you Need It
“It’s hard to do all the right things when you are under stress or not feeling well. It’s a good idea that if you are troubled by severe symptoms of anxiety, depression, or other disturbances, to get an evaluation to get treated.”
3. Take Time for Mindfulness
“Finding ways to calm our mind, to work from the center of our being outward, by doing the right things can make a big difference. Let me encourage all of you to take a deep breath, take some quiet moments to silence the noise in your mind, to listen quietly to your breathing, and to become calm and quiet inside. That’s a foundational beginning point.”
Those who are looking for mental health support can begin their search by calling 211 or searching through local organizations on the 211 Mental Health Website.
“Be kind to yourself and do little things every day that help you have a mentally-well, healthy approach to your life,” says Dr. Gardner
In addition to his role at Impact Mental Health, Dr. Gardner is an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Utah School of Medicine, where he spent 15 years as the Chief of Consultation – Liason Psychiatry. He has expanded the clinic to be a training site for psychiatry residents, psychiatric doctorate-of-nursing practice students, and social work students.
Learn more about Impact Mental Health’s role in the community and support their efforts by visiting impactmentalhealth.org.
