Activity 1: Me, Myself, & I-Personal Definitions of Mental Health

Purpose: This activity allows participants to reflect on their own personal definitions of mental health. By starting with the assumption that mental health is a positive force, we can get past the common perspective of mental health as merely the absence of distress or crisis.

For this activity you will need:

· A 3x5 index card for each participant

Step 1: Direct participants to work with a partner and take five minutes or so to finish the following sentence:

•  When I feel mentally healthy, I...

Have them write their responses on the 3x5 index cards.

Ask them to:

•  Consider what it is like to be mentally healthy for you. What are your feelings? How do you behave? What is your physical health like? How are your relationships with friends, family, and co-workers? Make sure that your answers are about positive attributes, not about the absence of negative feelings or circumstances. For example, the answer "When I feel mentally healthy, I have a lot of energy" describes a positive attribute as opposed to "When I feel mentally healthy, I don't sleep all the time"-a statement about something that doesn't happen.

Step 2: Each partner should take five to 10 minutes to share and discuss how they finished the sentence, referring back to the index card if necessary.

Ask participants:

•  Are there any similarities between your personal definitions of mental health and those of your partner? Are there differences? What accounts for the unique elements of your personal definition-culture? family? life experience?
• Does mental health affect only your emotions, or does it have an impact on physical health, relationships, work life, and elsewhere?
• When you think about mental health as a positive attribute (things that are present rather than things that are lacking), does it change the way you think about taking care of yourself'?

Step 3: Have participants discuss with their partners whether the things they have listed and talked about are the kinds of circumstances and experiences that they normally associate with the words "mental health."

Points to Consider:

• Each person will have a slightly different definition of mental health.
• Often, when people think about mental health they immediately think about stress, violence, depression, and so on. These concerns are not about mental health, they are about mental and emotional distress. We cannot allow very pressing concerns with mental distress make us forget about the kinds of behaviors and circumstances we need to promote mental health for ourselves, our children, and our families.
• We hear a lot about learning to approach families starting with strengths rather than problems. Reflecting on our own mental health as a positive attribute is a first step in reinforcing a strength and resiliency approach to the families we work with.
  

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