A Beautiful Mind and the Misconceptions of Mental Health
Mental Health.
It’s a simple term, but it’s also a confusing one.
When I used to think about mental health, the first thing that came to my mind was sickness. The word “mental” elicited images in my head from movies and television of characters trapped in insane asylums.
Mental became “unwell.” Mental became "crazy."
The truth though is far more nuanced than that.
The stories we tell ourselves
We grow up with intentionally fantastical stories. The average person’s day isn’t exciting enough, so we create exciting and unique stories to take their place. Over time though, these tales become more than any single author may have intended. These stories sometimes change how we perceive reality.
I’ve watched a lot of movies. Many engrossing films like Shutter Island, Silver Linings Playbook, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, to name a few, each played some small role in forming my opinions on mental health, if even subconsciously.
I remember watching the Academy Award-winning film A Beautiful Mind by Ron Howard for the first time. I was fascinated by Russell Crowe’s ability to embody his characters with such surgical precision. (Maximus Decimus Meridus from Gladiator is an all-time favorite character of mine—I have the Funko Pop to prove it)
In A Beautiful Mind, Crowe plays the brilliant mathematician John Nash. The movie transports us into John’s early years at Princeton. We watch captivated by Crowe’s transformation from an odd college geek into a subsequent math legend.
However, it’s soon made clear that something is very wrong with John. After a dramatic turning point in the story, John is forcibly sedated and committed to a psychiatric facility. John has schizophrenia. The world has shifted for John, and we share in John’s confusion.
How can this be? How have these people, who John has interacted with for years, suddenly been figments of his imagination all along?
John isn’t crazy. He has a medical condition.
This type of dramatic story and others like it, in part, informed my view of mental health.
Understanding Mental Health
So, the million-dollar question — What is Mental Health really, and how does it affect us?
According to the World Health Organization:
According to the World Health Organization, “Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”
Mental Health, though, is more than the absence of mental disorders.
Everyone has a spectrum of emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual health. Regardless of where you are in your life today, the events that led you here sculpted those parts of your overall health.
Some people are healthier than others. They exercise and eat well-balanced meals. They look after how their body reacts to the world around them. Others spend less energy on taking care of themselves. Others still may have underlying issues that prevent them from being as active. Some may develop, even the healthiest of people, cancers or unfathomable conditions that plague their lives.
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Mental Health is the same way. It’s a spectrum of well-being. If you are in “good” mental health, that means that you have fortified your mind to fend off daily stressors and the occasional bad news. As a result, you are better prepared than others to deal with problems as they arise. Mental Health is a strength that shields us from the darkness.
Others fall on a different part of the spectrum. They are less mentally healthy and deal with anxieties and stressors far differently. They may suffer from depression, burnout, or other conditions that lessen the joy in their lives.
Mental health can’t be disconnected from physical health. They synergize with each other. They fuel one another.
Our mental health affects everything we do and how we interact with everything in our lives.
But Mental Health isn’t a binary system. Mental Health is something more nuanced than that. Someone can be mentally well and simultaneously be dealing with a traumatic event in their lives. You don’t need to be suffering from an acute disorder to require outside help.
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In the end, our Mental Health is health. It’s a significant piece of our overall wellness. Physical health is the other piece. We separate these two in our minds because physical pain is so clearly identifiable. When we skid our knees and fall of our bike, it bruises. When we break our arm, it’s clear from the cast we wear.
As people, I think we look for ways to catalog and understand the world. By putting something or someone into a distinctive box, we can contain and organize our world. Cataloging the world helps us feel in control.
But perhaps the answer to Mental Health is that we need to take each day one at a time and remember that our minds need rest, relaxation, and care just as do the rest of our bodies.
A Beautiful Mind
John Nash had a beautiful mind. He spent decades dealing with his demons and mental illness. Yet, he overcame the adversity in his life and went on to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize.
Mental Health isn’t just about whether or not we have an illness like John.
Mental Health is about consistently fortifying our minds the best we can. Honoring our Mental Health lets us do the things we were meant to do with the time we’ve been given.
📸: Amblin Entertainment / A Beautiful Mind
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