While one in four families in Colorado is affected by mental illnesses and much of the mental health community's efforts are focused on this issue, the term mental health is far more than merely the absence of a mental illness. Mental health is something all of us want for ourselves, whether we know it by name or not. When we speak of happiness, or peace of mind, or enjoyment, or satisfaction, we are usually talking about mental health. One way of describing mental health is to describe mentally healthy people. Just knowing what mental health is doesn't mean you can go out and be mentally healthy, but knowing can help you to think straight about it.
Mental health has to do with everybody's everyday life.
It has to do with the way that each person harmonizes their desires, ambition, abilities, ideals, feelings and conscience in order the meet the demands of life. There is no line that neatly divides the mentally healthy from the unhealthy. There are many different degrees of mental health. No one characteristic by itself can be taken as evidence of good mental health, nor the lack of any one as evidence of mental illness. And nobody has all the traits of good mental health all the time.