In times of stress, anxiety or uncertainty, it is even more important to take the extra steps required to maintain mental and emotional health than usual. Uncertainty and other destabilising states offer us opportunities to become more present and available to ourselves; and through this, we can become more available to others.

Good mental and emotional health, like physical health, financial health, and all the other dimensions contributing to wellbeing, need to be consciously attended to and maintained. Particularly in times of uncertainty, stress and anxiety can build to unhealthy levels.

Suicide is devastating. Those who are feeling suicidal know that; and those who have been left behind know that. Suicide concerns deep wounds - wounds that can feel like they will never heal. Left untreated, this may be true.

It’s great to have a reminder, but in reality, every day is a mental health day. This was never more pertinent than now, 18 months into a pandemic. We seem to be on the verge of a new dawn, but there will certainly still be much to process after all that we’ve undergone.

Covid restrictions are lifted and we head towards a ‘new normal’, this might be a good time to think about lessons learned over the past 18 months; healing that needs to be attended to, and skills and strategies that need to be developed or practiced so as to maintain positive mental health and resilience.

Counselling and psychotherapy are terms that sometimes overlap and are often used interchangeably. However, Counselling tends to focus on current issues or difficulties of recent origin, and is usually shorter in duration. Psychotherapy tends to go deeper and often requires more time to heal issues originating in the past, but which may be persistent or recurring in the present.

Thinking of exercising more? Here are some good mental and emotional health reasons you might like to consider. Less talked about than physical health, as a psychotherapist, I know that mental and emotional health are equally important and inextricably linked.

“It is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible”

The maintenance and development of personal vitality is a prerequisite to optimal functioning. Investment in one’s self is built upon the knowledge that distress undoubtedly occurs when others’ needs are continually put before one’s own.