You might have heard the terms emotional health and mental health interchangeably sometimes using both the words as synonyms. But in fact, mental health and emotional health are two different words with different meanings. While some aspects of mental health and emotional health overlap, they are not one. To attain a good state of wellness, it’s important to nurture both emotional health and mental health and if there are any issues, seek assistance from a reputed residential mental health treatment in Southern California.
To know in detail it’s important to know about them in detail and their differences.
Mental health
The word mental health is most commonly used daily, like in news reports, or casual conversation. But are you aware of what mental health means? Mental health has a high impact on your actions and thoughts, and it includes three important kinds of wellness and they are psychological, emotional and social.
The mental health status has an impact on several areas of your life starting from your ability to handle stress to how perfectly you are maintaining your relationships with other people. There are several symptoms associated with mental health which include severe mood changes, no energy, undereating, excess sleeping and enhanced use of alcohol and drugs.
Emotional health
Like mental health, the word emotional health is also the most commonly used in conversation, even when no one is sure about its meaning. Emotional health is having both emotional awareness and the capability to manage and express these feelings properly. There are no proper fixes for managing your emotional health, but there are several steps that one can take to improve emotional health. For instance, you can recognize the positivity in any situation and work on improving your strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses.
While it’s true that mental health and emotional health are the same in a few aspects, it is vital to keep in mind that those terms have several differences. Here are a few of them
- Mental health is processing information and emotional health is the expression of emotion: Mental health is how well your mind is processing and understanding the experiences and information. Emotional health includes your capability to manage and express your emotions that come from what you are learning and experiencing.
- One can thrive and other fights: A relevant difference between mental and emotional health is that you can get mental health problems with good emotional health and vice versa. For instance, while dealing with mental health issues such as having very little energy for day-to-day tasks, you can still show emotional health by looking for efficient ways to manage the minimum energy.
- Scope of both terms: Mental health not only includes how well you are understanding and processing things you are experiencing. It also involves your capability to carefully assess through decisions and preserve a stable and well-focused span of attention. The wide mental health scope puts it in sharp contrast to emotional health, which has the more attentive definition of rightly understanding and managing emotions.
- Psychological difference: Mental health and emotional health have some psychological differences. Mental health is linked with the overall wellness of the person including rational thinking, better decision making and management of difficult situations. Emotional health is the capability of managing feelings and moods. It also includes the ability to regulate emotions such as stress, sadness and anger for having a good relationship. To maintain overall good psychological health, it’s important to maintain a good balance of both emotional and mental health.
- Perception difference: These differences between mental and emotional health refer to how we think about and react to any specific situation. For example, mental health is associated with logical decision making and emotional health is about making decisions depending on intuition and feelings. In addition, mental health can be associated with how we organize, reason and use our emotions. Emotional health is about your capability to do the expression of your emotions, cope with feelings and nurture relationships. Identifying the cognitive difference between these two kinds of health offers a good understanding of how each of them plays a role in wellness.
- Differences in behavior: One of the major differences between mental health and emotional health is behavioral accompanying them. Mental health conditions can make people behave in certain ways that are out of character, like being engaged in some risky behaviors. In emotional health, behavior is carried by how somebody is feeling rather than any real mental illness. When you are emotionally overwhelmed, you can cry even when you are not depressed. Facing difficulty in managing emotions is one of the major signs of emotional distress. A right understanding of the difference between mental and emotional health assists us in identifying all warning signs and looking for assistance whenever required.
- Triggers for mental and emotional health: Mental health and emotional health are two important factors that have a good influence on an individual’s overall wellness. Mental triggers are events that spark negative thoughts and emotions. These can result in several psychological difficulties like anxiety as well as depression. Emotional triggers are caused because of a reaction to some situation or any person and might even be the outcome of some past experiences or trauma. Such triggers can make one feel overwhelmed as well as emotionally unstable resulting in feelings such as anger, sadness and fear.
- Proper identification of mental and emotional triggers is essential for properly dealing with them. Recognizing the trigger source is also important as it offers strong insights into the cause behind the emotional and mental health states. On identifying the triggers, individuals can then make use of the methods and therapies to assist them in better management and coping with emotional and mental wellness.
Conclusion
Maintaining good mental and emotional health is important for living a healthy and properly balanced life. Mental and emotional health have differences and can be enhanced through self-care practices and getting professional assistance whenever necessary. By properly understanding the difference between these two, we can work on enhancing overall wellness. If you are suffering because of imbalanced mental or emotional health, then you should think of seeking help from good residential mental health treatment in Southern California. They offer mental and emotional health assessments and work with you for the development of a unique plan of treatment that suits your requirements best.
