Understanding MENTAL HEALTH

Take a tour of the brain to discover the origins of anxiety and how to tackle it

- SCOTT DUTFIELD

The term ‘mental health’ is used to encompass a person’s emotional and psychological wellbeing, which is experienced differently from one person to the next and includes a spectrum of mental health conditions. One of the most prevalent mental health concerns today centres around people’s levels of anxiety and depression. In the US alone, 6.8 million adults are affected by generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), which is a feeling of unease and worry to a variety of degrees, from manageable fear to debilitating panic. Common mental health issues such as GAD can also have knock-on effects on our physical health: depression and anxiety can lead to increases in blood pressure, reduce the amount of blood that flows through the heart and increase the release of a stress hormone called cortisol, all of which can contribute to the development of heart disease.

Mental health is often intertwined with a concept known as neurodiversity. This term is used to describe the breadth of ways the human brain operates and how it interprets and processes information. A neurotypical person is someone whose brain functions in a typical way – similar to the majority of their peers. The brain of a neurodivergent person, however, deviates from the typical. For example, someone on the autism spectrum or with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might consider themselves to be neurodivergent.