MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN

 

The term mental health is generally defined as the absence of mental illness. The logic of this concept is that a person is healthy if he/she is not ill. This negative definition of health makes a great deal more sense with regard to somatic illness than with mental illness. As soon as we speak of mental health the picture becomes less clear because, firstly, we have no clear-cut picture of a person as to who is a normal/healthy person mentally and emotionally. Can a person who is like the majority of the people considered to be mentally healthy or is it possible that the very person who is different from the rest is considered mentally healthy while the rest of the society may not fulfill the criteria.Looking at these difficulties encountered by the very definition of mental health, psychologists and sociologists have forwarded the sociological concept of mental health. This defines mental health as “any person is mentally healthy who is well adapted to the society, who functions well in terms of the social order he is living in”. In this definition, the society is the measure and not the individual. What is good for the society or for the state is good for the man as well.

Any given society, as we have read earlier, has its own structures and laws. This is the same whether we deal with the primitive tribe that lives by robbing and killing neighboring tribes or whether we think of peaceful tribes which live by farming or any other means. If a member of a warrior tribe likes robbing or killing, if the slave or a servant is submissive and docile, if an office goer is punctual and orderly these will contribute to the good functioning of the society. Actually, being in accord with the purpose and aims of the society, the individual will be at rest with others and does not feel isolated and in a way will feel healthy, it is in this sense that the normative, sociological concept describes the healthy man as the well-adjusted man.