Have you ever wondered how closely your mental health and physical health are connected and how they work together to shape your overall well-being?
As a psychologist, I’ve seen firsthand how these connections play out in real life and consider thoughts and behaviors to be the cornerstone of mental health. How you think about situations and your actions that follow those thoughts can directly affect your mental health. It’s why I’ve spent the last 25 years helping children and their families identify specific thinking patterns and discover ways to change unhelpful behaviors—often the same reasons that bring them to see me.
However, I recognize that this is only part of the equation. A healthy body makes having a healthy mind a much more achievable goal.
Physical and mental health are linked.
Stress can show up for us in many ways:
- A challenging workplace environment.
- Conflict in family or intimate relationships.
- Decreased confidence in our ability to perform at work or school.
- And bullying, for both children and adults.
When we experience stress, there are clear physical consequences. People who experience continued or chronic stress are more prone to illnesses because of weakened immunity. They can experience high blood pressure and, with prolonged stress, are at higher risk for heart disease.
We also know that there is a link between mental health disorders like depression or anxiety and physical disorders like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It’s clear that how we manage and think about stress can harm our physical health.
The reverse is also true; when our physical health suffers, it significantly impacts our mental well-being. Science has shown that chronic pain or chronic illnesses often lead to feelings of sadness or excessive worry, and these feelings make the pain or illness harder to manage.
Children and adults with chronic medical conditions often struggle with mental health problems. It is also not unusual for people living with a disability or chronic illness to experience feelings of isolation or frustration, which can develop into mental health disorders.
The mind-body connection becomes evident when we look at the physical symptoms associated with a mental health diagnosis. People of all ages diagnosed with anxiety frequently report symptoms such as chest tightness, stomach upset (often described as feeling butterflies that turn into jumping frogs), experiencing a “need to pee!” feeling, dizziness, and body temperature changes.
Depression and low mood are known to affect sleep, appetite, and energy levels. The fact that physical symptoms are so common in mental health diagnoses tells us that taking care of our physical health can significantly influence our mental well-being.
Listen to your body.
When treating a variety of mental health disorders, clinicians often focus on learning to listen to what your body is telling you.
We also encourage healthy eating, establishing sleep routines, and moving your body. We discuss how exercise—even something as simple as a walk around the block—can help improve your mood or lessen anxiety. Techniques such as relaxation, mindfulness, and biofeedback—personally I’m a fan of when children, teens and adults learn to control the variability in their heart rates—can help make those out-of-control panicky moments less overwhelming.
These physically focused aspects of treatment are most effective when paired with learning how to recognize unhelpful thoughts, understanding what you can and cannot control, problem-solving, and making choices that help you move in the direction you want to go.
The powerful bond between mental and physical health shows us how important it is to look after both our bodies and our minds. A realistic health goal for children, adolescents, young adults, adults, and seniors lies in finding harmony between the mind and body.
By addressing mental and physical health together, we can help create a brighter and healthier future for all.
