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      The World Federation for Mental Health is focusing the Oct 10th, 2018 as WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY campaign on Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World.  You know very well problems such as stress and anxiety can damage your mental health. And it’s not just academic stress; stress from family and relationship problems, spending most of your day on the internet, experiencing cybercrimes, cyber bullying, and playing violent video games. When coping resources are inadequate, stressful events may give rise to unhealthy outcomes such as overeating, drinking, and smoking or give up your goal.  Being able to control and manage your stress will provide with a great opportunity to acquire new skills and will also facilitate your personal growth.

CIRPE – Center for Improving Relationship and Personal Effectiveness, Puducherry,India organizing a stress awareness programme for the youth to enhance their psychological health.

Kindly register to participate in this programme.

Summary of the Programme

• Overview of the topic of stress, including its causes, forms, and consequences
• Testing your stress level
• Increase awareness of use of maladaptive ways of coping with stress
• Short lectures, Exercises, group discussion, Feedback

Duration : 2.30 Hours ( 6.30 Pm to 9 Pm )

Age limitation : 15 to 20 years can participate

Last date for registration :  7/10/2018

Date and venue will be intimated on 8/10/2018

Click Here To Register

One thing you have to teach, teach how to cope!

Infant’s coping

They have the ability to regulate stress. Coping dominated by behavioural rather than cognitive because of capacities for executive functioning is very limmityed paralleling the development of the frontal lobes.Young infants will try to regulate the amount of incoming stimulation by

· closing their eyes,

· turning their heads,

· falling asleep, or,

· if all else fails, crying loudly

An infant even a few weeks old will solicit social stimulation through eye contact, smiles, and gurgling, but will turn away if too much stimulation is proffered. Certainly, infants are also able to modulate their cries in order to signal the type of distress they are experiencing such as, hunger, wetness, fright.

What makes better coping?

Caregiver sensitivity is basic to the development of better coping. Secure attachment with the caregiver is essential for healthy development.

Types of attachment and its influences

1 Secure attachment

Children are confident that their caregiver will be available, responsive, and helpful should they encounter adverse or frightening situations. This security builds confidence in the child, encourages exploration and competence, and is thought to be consistent with healthy development.

2 Anxious/ insecure attachment or resistant

Children are uncertain that their care-giver(s) will be available, responsive, or helpful when needed. The child tends to be clingy and anxious about exploring the world and may suffer from separation-anxiety. These infants fail to move away from the attachment-figure and show little exploration. They are also highly distressed by separations and are difficult to settle after reunion.

3 Avoidant attachment

Children expect to be rejected by their care-giver(s) when they seek support or care. Several studies indicate that avoidant attachment is associated with particular patterns of emotional and behavioral problems, such as a pattern of depression characterized by perfectionism, self-punishment, and self-criticism somatic complaints, substance abuse and conduct disorder and schizoid and avoidant personality disorders.

Coping among Toddlers

The infant must be able to orient to the external environment, learn to anticipate events, and represent the world symbolically. The first involves attention. Problem-focused coping strategies emerging slowly, again the capacities for executive functioning, paralleling the development of the frontal lobes is the reason. Emotion regulation also develops in early childhood, and cultural differences in the expression of emotion emerge at an early age.

What makes better coping?

The interactions between parents and children (particularly the early ones involving communication between mother and baby) are of crucial significance in a child’s development. What a baby needs is close, confident, and caring physical and emotional contact with the parents or carers in order to be healthy and to develop vigorously.

Coping among Preschoolers

Defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, and displacement can be observed in preschoolers.Parents are still the primary source of social support for preschoolers. They are also still egocentric and often unable to see others’ perspectives. Parents strongly influence the development of coping strategies in young children.

What makes better coping?

Parents help the children in three ways.

1. Parents can coach their children as to the appropriate emotional responses and coping strategies.

2. They can also model these themselves.

3. They can create a home environment that is conducive to different types of coping by their own responses to children’s distress, for example, that may encourage or discourage disclosure, avoidant behaviors, and so on.

Coping in Middle Childhood

During this age period, children become more able to verbalize and differentiate their feelings. Children in middle childhood are also more able to seek social support outside their immediate family. Interestingly, it is between ages of 6 and 9 that gender differences in seeking social support emerge, with girls seeking more support than boys, a pattern that continues into adulthood.

In this stage more cognitively oriented attempts at emotion and problem-focused coping, including such strategies as cognitive reframing, self-talk to calm emotions, and the like are possible.

What makes better coping?

The family environment plays a pivotal role in children’s socialization. temperament, play an important role in children’s adaptation following exposure to stress. Characteristics of the family environment, parent behaviours, socialisation practices, and individual differences in temperament may lead to important differences in children’s cognitive appraisals, coping behaviours, and psychosocial adjustment following exposure to stressful life events.

Coping in Adolescence

Parents still have a large influence on coping strategies. Parental warmth was most associated with active coping in adolescents. In this stage adolescents may turn more to their friends and siblings for social support than to their parents. Some types of maladaptive coping strategies are adopted—namely, using drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes to reduce distress.

What makes better coping?

Unsuccessful adaptation to such stressful events can lead to adverse short- and long-term consequences, and, especially when these events occur in childhood or adolescence, they can affect social, cognitive and psychological development.

· spending considerable amount of time with your child, today’s parents spend far less time than they could conversing and

· Playing with children, teaching them important skills, and participating with them in the routine responsibilities of everyday life.

· Most of the parents not turn to a child for reassurance and comfort during times of distress.

Some stressful events of children and adolescents

· Parental divorce.

· Rejection

· Poverty

· Sexual abuse

· Moving house and changing schools

· Natural disasters

· Violence

· Personal or parental chronic illness

Therapists are not equivalent to parents, love your children regardless of their behaviour. Provide a healthy and pleasant family atmosphere. Help them to develop good coping. Happy parenting!.

I want to know how God created this world … I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details. —Albert Einstein

Many people experience anxiety and fear as they observe natural disasters, street violence, crime, war, family disintegration, and social upheaval, all of which test people’s sense of meaning and coherence in the world today. Many people have lost faith in the ability of science to provide solutions to all of humanity’s problems. Spirituality takes us beyond our current way of thinking, feeling, or acting. Spiritual intelligence helps to grow our level of self to integrate conflicts and become more than we are. Spirituality and psychology share a concern with the quality of human life. They hope to offer guidance to people seeking to find meaningful, fulfilled, and even happy lives.

What spirituality / religion offer?

Levin (1995), a social scientist suggested that

1. Religious belief and affiliation provide a person with a secure sense of identity, which lowers one’s average anxiety level and facilitates resiliency under stress.
2. Religious conviction may provide a sense of purpose and meaning that enables rational interpretations of life’s problems, including death.
3. Positive emotions of hope, faith, optimism, and catharsis emerge from beliefs and rituals, including the process of forgiveness and the hope of healing and redemption.
4. Religious affiliation links one with a network or community of believers that provides a feeling of belonging, family, and social support in times of need, as well as a steady flow of opportunities to serve other people.
5. Religion through prayer, ritual, worship, and so forth provides inner experiences of communion between the individual and the “Higher Power” that may yield insight or peace even if there is not a Higher Power.
6. Many beliefs lead to a lifestyle that includes healthy habits and a healthy inner sense of responsibility and self-control.

Social scientist have found that the Western and Eastern spiritual worldviews have some similarities, including the general notions that,

(a) Some sort of harmony with an eternal principle or essence (with God or an impersonal One) is possible;

(b) Human beings have free will;

(c) There are moral or ethical principles or laws with which human beings should seek to live in harmony; and

(d) There are paths or ways that lead to personal and social harmony, enlightenment, growth, peace, and happiness.

Current trend in spiritual strategies

1. Many studies have provided evidence that religion and spirituality are positively associated with many indicators of mental health.
2. The positive psychology movement supports and stimulates by the current professional interest in spirituality.
3. Mental health practitioners who wished to include religion and spirituality as part of treatment.

Some of the common spiritual strategies people use

1. Prayer
2. Going to temple/ church / Mosque regularly etc.
3. Reading sacred books such as bible /bhagavad gita/ Qur’an etc.
4. Yoga, meditation,worships etc.
5. Service, charity, sacrifice
6. Attending seminar, speeches, visiting sacred places
7. Living with particular life style or values
8. Seeking meaning or truth

Some common problems with spiritual strategies

1. People worships idols not the ideals behind it
2. Dysfunctional religious and spiritual beliefs and practices
3. Cultural influence over the concept of religion / spirituality
4. Many people have doubt about the religious / spiritual concepts
5. Exploitation in the name of spirituality by the authorities
6. Commercialization
7. People using when needed not practice in their daily lives

Happy life journey!

When someone attempts or completed suicide, it becomes traumatic event and painful to their family members or friends. A variety of emotions may emerge such as anger, fear, worry, guilt, shame, all which are normal. After returning from hospital treatment, some people will be more prone to repeat attempts, and others won’t be. The family, friends and attempt survivor will need to learn a reasonable and balanced way of communication and creating effective plan for recovery. Counseling and therapy, both individual and for the entire family can help you to develop a plan and deal with all the emotions you are experiencing.

“Not talking about what happened or ignoring the issues often further complicates an already complicated situation and may even increase the risk of a future suicide attempt for the survivor. “

After exposure to traumatic events, you may experience the following:

• Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep; waking up early
• Nightmares and/or “flashbacks”
• Difficulty concentrating or paying attention
• Carelessness in performing ordinary tasks
• Outbursts of irritability or anger, sometimes without apparent reason.
• Unusual bodily fatigue
• Feelings of emotional numbness
• An inability to let go of distressing mental images or thoughts
• Feelings of depression, loss, or sadness
• Feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and lack of control
• Feelings of guilt or shame

Suicide prevention should be a three part including prevention, intervention, and postvention. Effective counseling and therapy is an integral part of comprehensive suicide prevention efforts.

Prevention may reduce suicide risk by identifying and supporting the emotional and mental health needs of the survivors. Intervention and Postvention helps to alleviate the distress of suicidally bereaved individuals, reduce the risk of imitative suicidal behavior, and promote the healthy recovery of the affected person and family.

When we react to stressors, a wide variety of cognitive and emotional responses can occur. Examples of cognitive responses are concentration problems, indecision, forgetfulness, and sensitivity to criticism, self-critical thoughts, and rigid attitudes. Examples of emotional responses are nervousness, tension, irritability and anger. Stress contributes not only physical ill health but also psychological ill health. Taking care of our psychological health is very important. We need to learn how to preserve and promote psychological health to cope more effectively with our stressful life situations.

Psychological health is dependent on the fit between the entire configuration of a person’s characteristics and potentials with those of the environments in which the person functions, such as family, job, school, church, and recreation.   Psychological health is about doing things that give you a sense of enjoyment and achievement, holding helpful and balanced attitudes toward life, and building satisfying relationships.

A theoretical model of psychological health encompasses 6 distinct dimensions

1. Autonomy,
2. Environmental Mastery,
3. Personal Growth,
4. Positive Relations with Others,
5. Purpose in Life,
6. Self-Acceptance

Psychological health includes

1. Emotional health

Learning the skills needed to handle emotional problems will give you a foundation of psychological health. Everyone, including people who are emotionally healthy, has problems. Emotionally healthy people are able to adjust to and solve problems, and in doing so they help others as well as themselves to get satisfaction out of life. Mood is central to psychological health, and disturbances in mood are related to subsequent psychological maladjustment.

2. Spiritual health

Learn to love. Cultivate the skill of loving each other and ourselves.

3. Social health

People are able to coexist peacefully in communities with opportunities for advancement.

Psychological health produce varied outcomes including

(a) Reduced stress, strain, anxiety, absenteeism, turnover intentions, and turnover;

(b) Improved physical health, psychological health, emotional stability, adjustment, goal-setting behavior, coping, adaptation, attitudes toward learning, and vocational choice; and

(c) Increased creativity, motivation, performance, occupational success, commitment, tenure, satisfaction, and morale.

Positive psychology: psychological health

Positive psychology expands our view of psychological health beyond the absence of symptoms and disorders, and provides hope that a healthy, fulfilled, and productive life is possible for all.

Primary enhancement of psychological health suggests that our relationships are crucial for life satisfaction. Indeed, for most people, interpersonal relationships with lovers, family, and good friends provide the most powerful sources of well-being and life satisfaction. Beyond the relationship with one’s mate, primary enhancement satisfactions also can come from other relationships, such as family and friends. Arranging living circumstances to be within close physical proximity to kin also can produce the social supports that are so crucial.

Secondary enhancement of psychological health enables people to maximize their pleasures by building on their preexisting positive mental health. Peak psychological moments often involve important human connections, such as the birth of child, a wedding, the graduation of a loved one, or perhaps the passionate and companionate love of one’s mate. There are psychological group experiences the purpose of which is to help people to achieve the extreme pleasures of in-depth relating with others.

Rational emotive behavioural theory: criteria of psychological health 

Rational emotive behavioural theory also puts forward a number of criteria of psychological health. These include the following:

• Self-interest: Sensible and emotionally healthy people tend to be primarily interested in themselves and to put their own interests at least a little above the interests of others. They sacrifice themselves to some degree for those for whom they care but not overwhelmingly or completely.
• Social interest: Social interest is usually rational and self-helping because most people choose to live and enjoy themselves in a social group or community. If they do not act morally, protect the rights of others, and abet social survival, it is unlikely that they will create the kind of world in which they themselves can live comfortably and happily.
• Self-direction: Healthy people tend mainly to assume responsibility for their own lives while simultaneously preferring to cooperate with others. They do not need or demand considerable support or succoring from others, though they may prefer and work for this.
• High frustration tolerance: Rational individuals give both themselves and others the right to be wrong. Even when they intensely dislike their own and others’ behavior, they refrain from damning themselves or others, as persons, for unacceptable or obnoxious behavior. They are capable of changing the changeable and accepting those they cannot, and having the wisdom to know the difference between the two.
• Flexibility: Healthy and mature individuals tend to be flexible in their thinking, open to change, and unbigoted and pluralistic in their view of other people. They do not make rigid, invariant rules for themselves and others.
• Acceptance of uncertainty: Healthy men and women tend to acknowledge and accept the idea that we seem to live in a world of probability and chance where absolute certainties do not and probably never will exist. They realize that it is often fascinating and exciting and definitely not horrible to live in this kind of probabilistic and uncertain world. They enjoy a good degree of order but do not demands to know exactly what dies future will bring or what will happen to them.
• Commitment to creative pursuits: Most people tend to be headier and happier when they are vitally absorbed in something outside themselves and preferably have at least one powerful creative interest, as well as some major human involvement, that they structure a good part of their life around it.
• Scientific thinking: Non-disturbed individuals tend to be more objective, realistic, and scientific than more disturbed ones. They are able to feel deeply and act concertedly, but they tend to regulate their emotions and actions by reflecting on them and evaluating their consequences in terms of the extent to which they lead to the attainment of short-term and long-term goals.
• Self-acceptance: Healthy people are usually glad to be alive and accept themselves just because they are alive and have some capacity to enjoy themselves. They refuse to measure their intrinsic worth by their extrinsic achievements or by what others think of them. They try to avoid rating themselves– their totality or their being. They attempt to enjoy rather than to prove themselves.
• Risk-taking: Emotionally healthy people tend to take a fair amount of risk and to try to do what they want to do, even when there is a good chance that they may fail. They tend to be adventurous but not foolhardy.
• Long-range hedonism: Well-adjusted people tend to seek both the pleasures of the moment and those of the future and do not often court future pain for present gain. They are hedonistic, that is, happiness-seeking and pain avoidant, but they assume that they will probably live for quite a few years and that they had therefore better think of both today and tomorrow and not be obsessed with immediate gratification.
• Non-utopianism: Healthy people accept the fact that Utopias are probably unachievable and that they are never likely to get everything they want and to avoid all pain. They refuse to strive unrealistically for total joy, happiness, or perfection or for total lack of anxiety, depression, self-downing, and hostility.
• Self-responsibility for own emotional disturbance: Healthy individuals tend to accept a great deal of responsibility for their own disturbance rather than defensively blame others or social conditions for their self-defeating thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Creating and reinforcing psychological health is the goal in successfully living a balanced lifestyle. Learn to preserve and promote psychological health!.

Individualized stress management sessions help’s to improve your performance in personal, social and work life. Stress is unavoidable but increasing your coping skills enhance your well-being.

http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/henry-edwards/2018051738431