Sustaining Mental Health: A Path to a Healthier and More Sustainable Future

Someone in the streets of Tik Tok explained anxiety to me recently. It went like this. Remember when you were a child and you got into trouble with your parent and they said, ‘Wait until we get home” or “Wait till your father gets home” Do you remember that feeling at the pit of your stomach when you started getting closer to home or hearing your dad’s car hooting at the gate? Imagine having that feeling being your constant way of existing. That is just one way people experience mental health issues.

You might wonder what sustainability has to do with mental health. Let’s start here. Sustainability means taking care of the needs of our generation without depleting the resources we use for the next generation. If the next generation depends on how we use our resources maybe, we should consider sustaining ourselves first.

Think about it this way when God created the world, he filled it with a great number of resources. In his wisdom he did the same thing when he created humans. Human beings are filled with physical, emotional, and mental resources. These resources are to be sustained with the same fearlessness as the earth’s resources. Why? because human resources affect how we find and consume our natural resources, but more importantly current human resources also affect the future human resources.

With the above in mind, is it clearly our generation’s responsibility to ensure sustainability of the future’s generation’s mental health?

This is not only individual. It is also institutional. Organizations and companies can ensure their institutions have safe working environments by training resilience, creating more outdoor working spaces, stress management workshops and fun activities for their employees that maintain a healthy mental lifestyle. Did you know; According to the WHO’s 2020 Mental Health Atlas, only 25% of the organization’s members have integrated mental health into their health care systems. That means diagnosis, treatment and care remains out of reach for the vast majority of 280 million people worldwide suffering from depression. This has to change. If a generation spends time doing things that preserve their minds the next generation has an example to follow and they won’t have to start creating these facilities or working environments from scratch.

Another thing to have in mind when thinking of mental health and sustainability is we use our physical resources economically; Like walking versus running when someone is doing errands. By regulating and controlling our emotions we manage emotional resources. This brings me to wonder how we manage or regulate our mental resources. The state of our lives requires our minds to perform several tasks simultaneously. The brain might only be 1.4 Kgs but it uses approximately 20% of the body’s energy.  Such a small organ doing all these tasks needs some kind maintenance.

What does maintenance for the brain look like? Well we could start by acknowledging that all our human resources are interconnected. For example when we were at the peak of covid 19 in Nairobi, one of my sisters happened to be infected by the virus. As soon as she was diagnosed I was certain I was sick too. I could feel the fever. I wasn’t sure I couldn’t taste my mother’s kienyeji chicken and I sprayed too much air freshener in the toilet. When the test came back negative I was so confused I asked for another one. That also came back negative.

You see the more I thought I was sick the more I felt sick. What my mind was thinking was affecting how my body was feeling.

Mental, Emotional and Physical health are intertwined. This means some solutions to mental health require some physical or emotional work like being active or sharing how we feel with a loved one. It may look like taking a moment to breathe. Doing things that bring you joy.

Sustainability is about our children and our grandchildren, and the world we will leave them. Our children are watching. They see everything. They watch us taking that run, writing in our journal, going to therapy and contributing to charity. They also see fruits. They see us happy, joyful and compassionate. They see us satisfied with our lives and contributing to our society. They see us pouring from our cups because we constantly fill them. Mental Health can be sustained from generation to generation. To retain the human race and its resources we must make this our priority.