Mental Health VS. Emotional Health-Are they related?

Mental Health VS. Emotional Health-Are they related?

The direct correlation between mental health versus emotional health is a bit like talking about apples and oranges. While they might both appear to be identical, they are not actually the same thing at all. Most people would tend to describe themselves as either an intellectual person or a more emotional person. A healthy individual would say they are balance of both.

The Mental and Emotional Connection

However, in our understanding that mental health and emotional health tackle two different parts of our personality, processing and reasoning, they are very much intertwined. Without a sense of high-quality mental health our emotions can run wild and wreak havoc on our personality, along with the decisions we make and how we act and react to life's situations. Alternately, should we have a low-quality emotional health, our mental acuity can easily become disoriented and make it nearly impossible to function normally.

What Is Mental Health?

The state of your mental health involves successful cognitive thinking, or the ability to stay focused with sustained, divided and selective attention, and the capability to process information, store information in our long-term memory, the ability to understand what we hear and see, along with the function of logical processing and reasoning. Additionally, it involves volitional reasoning, or the ability to make a conscious choice or a reasonable decision through willful determination.

What is Emotional Health?

One useful and positive definition of emotional health might be the capability to express all of your emotions in an appropriate way. This definition is tricky though, in that a two-year-old might run the gamut of all different types of emotions, which although might be normal for them, is totally inappropriate for an adult. Typically, a good definition of optimal emotional health is positive management and an expression of your emotional actions and reactions void of any unhealthy stress or depression.

You Cannot Have One without the Other

It would be impossible to suggest that all of our volitional reasoning, or the ability to make a willfully determined choice, is made solely as a mental processing function. Many of the choices we make are based on how we feel, who we love and how we wish to serve and be served by others. Likewise, many of the feelings and emotions we experience are due to cognitive reasoning, in the understanding of what we see and hear, along with the logical processing it takes to find reason in our interactions with others and how we communicate in our relationships.

In our search to discover the differences of mental health versus emotional health, it quickly becomes apparent that they are very much different, while being very much the same. Effectively managing both of these functions of our personality is a way to optimize their health. Doing so can eliminate high levels of stress and anxiety, fear, anger, depression and worry. Deep inside us all, we have the emotional resilience we need to tackle life's daily challenges to live with optimal mental and emotional health. However, it might take some volitional reasoning to bring it o