In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world, mental health is often overlooked in the pursuit of productivity, success and keeping up with life’s demands. Just as regular physical check-ups are crucial for maintaining physical health, mental health check-ups are essential to ensure emotional well-being.
Taking proactive steps to assess your mental state can have a profound impact on overall quality of life. Here’s why conducting regular mental health check-ups is so important.
What Is a Mental Health Check-Up?
A mental health check-up involves evaluating different areas of your life to help identify signs of anxiety, depression, burnout, stress, or other mental health challenges that may not be immediately apparent.
This process can be done with a mental health professional, but it can also start with self-reflection. Think of it as a moment to pause, assess how you’re truly feeling, and make necessary adjustments to support your mental well-being.
Benefits of Performing a Mental Health Check-Up
- Early Detection of Mental Health Issues: Many mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression and burnout, develop over time. Regular mental health check-ups allow for early detection, providing the opportunity to address these issues before they worsen.
- Improved Emotional Resilience: Checking in on your mental health enables you to assess how well you’re managing stress, change, and challenges in your life. When you make time for mental health maintenance, you become more emotionally resilient and better equipped to navigate life’s ups and downs.
- Maintaining and Improving Relationships: Mental health plays a significant role in how we connect and communicate with others. By keeping your mental health in check, you are more likely to maintain healthy, meaningful relationships. Whether it’s family, friends or colleagues, being emotionally balanced helps improve your ability to empathize and engage in positive interactions, reducing conflicts and misunderstandings.
7 Areas to Evaluate During a Mental Health Check-Up
1. Connections: Take stock of who you are spending your time with—both in real life and online. The people and connections we focus on have great influence on our mental health. Focus on the connections that fill you up, not those that drain you. Do you need to set boundaries around your connections? Do you need to let some go?
2. Support: Which people have been there for you the most in the last year? Do you feel you have a support system you can rely on when you need help?
3. Mood: Have you been experiencing significant mood swings, crying, or lots of negative thoughts? Tune-in to your emotions and notice what is happening when you are happy, sad, anxious or angry. Take a moment to actually think about your thoughts. Become aware of where your mind is spending time – is it helping or hurting you? Try to recognize and track negative “triggers”. This can help you better identify, prepare and make changes the next time around.
4. Nutrition: How is your appetite? Has your appetite or eating habits changed in any way recently? Are you taking time to enjoy meals and including a variety of foods in your diet? Nutrition is important, but low appetite can also be signs of depression and other mental health concerns.
5. Sleep: Have you been getting quality sleep and going to bed and waking up at consistent times? Are you overly fatigued or tired at the end of the day? How about at the end of the week?
6. Exercise: What have you been doing for exercise lately? Have you found movement that you look forward to each day? Moving your body every day can have a drastic impact on your mood and mental health. Simply taking a short walk can shift your day immediately.
7. Mindset: What’s taking up most of your headspace right now? Are those thoughts serving you or could you use a mindset shift? Are you focused on the future? What could you start doing that your future self would thank you for?
Prioritizing mental health through regular check-ups is an essential part of living a balanced and healthy life. Start small, and make mental health check-ups a priority today.
Maaliea Wilbur, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, is Founder and CEO of TherapyWorks. For more information, visit mytherapyworks.com.
