Title: How Does Self-Care Affect Mental Health? - Mission Harbor Behavioral Health
Headings: How Does Self-Care Affect Mental Health?
How Does Self-Care Affect Mental Health?
What Is Self-Care?
What Do Studies Say About Self-Care and Mental Health?
How to Practice Self-Care
Find Help When You Need It
Sam Dekin

Content: Self-care also encompasses all the things you need to do to remain healthy, reduce stress, and feel as mentally well as possible. This means that getting a massage is self-care, but so is cleaning your home to reduce your stress. Enjoying an ice cream on a warm day counts as self-care, but so does attending therapy sessions to address your emotional needs, trauma, or mental illnesses. What Do Studies Say About Self-Care and Mental Health? Because self-care is the practice of caring for your physical, emotional, and psychological wellbeing, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that it does, in fact, have an effect on your mental health. Self-care relies on increased self-awareness, which can benefit people who are living with a mental illness. Practicing self-awareness can help you to recognize patterns in your emotions, including events or situations that can trigger worsened symptoms. It can also help you to recognize what activities or tasks are necessary of your wellbeing, soothe negative symptoms of a mental illness or stress, or simply bring you pleasure or relaxation. That doesn’t mean that self-care is the cure for mental or physical illnesses. While self-care can help people with conditions like mental illnesses or chronic illnesses, it also has been found that many people fail to provide adequate self-care in the midst of a flare-up of symptoms.